Questions of Existence
by Energybeing
Summary: The Order of Dagon made Dawn Buffy's older sister. It wasn't a good idea.
1. Chapter 1

Author's note: this story is set shortly after Buffy finds out that she's the Slayer, and before the start of Warehouse 13. I do not own either of these shows, and I will never do so. Don't sue me for their use.

This will not be a happy story. I'm warning you in advance. It may not be outright dark, but it definitely isn't light and fluffy.

~*~

Dawn trusted her younger sister. She always had. Buffy might not be the most mature of people - in fact, she might even be called shallow - but Dawn still trusted her. She'd always had a close relationship with Buffy, and that didn't change when Dawn went to study at UCLA.

So, when Buffy told Dawn that she had been chosen to be a Vampire Slayer, Dawn believed her. Even though it sounded like something right out of a fantasy TV show. It helped that Buffy was able to demonstrate a strength far greater than her petite form should've been able to wield.

Neither Hank nor Joyce believed Buffy. They thought she was joking when she told them. So Buffy gave up, resigned herself to their scepticism and stopped trying to convince them.

Dawn wasn't jealous of Buffy. Not after she burned down the gym. Not after Merrick died. But she did wonder about herself. She was the sister of the Slayer, after all. That had to count for something, didn't it?

Dawn was a brilliant student. She had always enjoyed school, had passed with flying colours, been accepted to UCLA with a full scholarship. It wasn't until one of her tutors mentioned in passing that Dawn picked things up as though she already knew them that she began to think.

Dawn was majoring in Physics. It was the only subject that had even been a remote challenge to her. Everything else was easy. Dawn had never wondered why - she had always assumed she was just naturally gifted. But the combination of a throwaway comment and her dwelling on the fact that she was the Slayer's sister made Dawn wonder.

So Dawn began studying things she had never even considered before. To her astonishment, she became fluent in Latin and Ancient Greek within six weeks. So she diversified, ranging into ever more exotic languages - which she learned at an equally fast rate. Her tutors said that it wasn't so much that Dawn learnt a language as that she merely remembered it.

It was around that time that her dreams started. Dawn began having vivid dreams, more lucid than any she had ever had before. Dreams of monks, chanting. Dreams of fantastical religious rituals, all centred on a glowing ball of energy.

For some reason, Dawn identified herself with that ball.

Dawn started to study history, a subject which had never before interested her in slightest. Surprisingly, Dawn found that certain time periods in certain countries seemed intimately familiar to her. Not on a mental level, but an emotional one. She couldn't explain why.

But Dawn did find that the historical periods that were most familiar just happened to speak the languages that she had learned so easily. On a whim, Dawn tried to learn a language spoken elsewhere in the world during that time period.

It was tough going. Dawn could have learned it, given time, especially given its similarity to the several other languages she now spoke, but certainly not in a matter of weeks.

Dawn didn't understand how such a thing could be possible, but she wasn't the sort of woman to leave things alone. She kept worrying away at it, trying to come up with theories.

Dawn had only one. Past lives. All she could think of was that she must have previously lived during those time periods and spoken those languages. But Dawn couldn't explain why everything was bleeding through now, why these things seemed so familiar.

It didn't occur to Dawn that the reason she was realizing all of this was because she was actively searching for ways that she was different. If she hadn't, Dawn might well have carried on thinking that she was merely a gifted student. She certainly never would've thought that she was just remembering things that she already knew.

It was shortly after this idea that Dawn had her dream. At first, it was no different than any of the others she had had - it was still populated with hooded monks and ominous chants.

Then, a note of panic threaded its way into the dream. The monks were no longer ordered, but clearly terrified of something that was coming. The Abomination, they called it. Dawn, in her dream, didn't think anything of that. In these curiously lucid dreams, she never did. She always felt like a spectator, just watching but passing no judgement on what she saw. It wasn't until she woke up that she ever thought about it.

So, in the dream, Dawn didn't think it was odd that the monks were talking about sending the Key to the Slayer for protection. It wasn't until she woke up that she put it all together.

Buffy was the Slayer.

The Key had been around for millennia. No doubt the monks that always seemed to surround it had spoken various different languages (their native tongues, most likely) and would've been abreast with current affairs in their own countries. So, in all probability, the Key would've been too.

The Key had been sent to the Slayer.

Dawn knew things about events that were impossible for someone her age to know - for anyone to know, in fact, unless they'd lived through them. As the Key had.

The Key that had been sent to the Slayer. To Buffy. Her sister. The person who she had always trusted, always been close to, closer to than anyone else.

Therefore, Dawn was the Key.

Naturally, Dawn told Buffy all of this. She was the only person Dawn could tell.

Buffy knew that she was the Slayer, and strangeness followed her around, but this was too much. Buffy thought Dawn was crazy.

Dawn thought that Buffy was probably right. This was crazy above and beyond having a sister who killed vampires. Nevertheless, Dawn still thought it was true.

It was impossible for Dawn to reconcile those two thoughts.

So Dawn checked herself into a psychiatric hospital. Maybe they could help her there.

Maybe they could convince her that she existed.


	2. Chapter 2

"Tell me a little bit about yourself, Dawn." Dr Nathan Greene, one of several juvenile psychiatrists working at Grey's Psychiatric Hospital, asked pleasantly.

"I already filled out one of those form thingies when I came in. I put all my details on that." said Dawn. Although, of course, she knew that Greene wasn't asking her about where she was born, or her telephone number or medical history. He was obviously asking about why she was checking herself into a juvenile psychiatric ward.

"Of course." Greene replied. "But that information is merely factual. Why don't you tell me why you're here?"

Ah well. Dawn knew she would have to tell someone at some point. They could hardly help convince her that she existed if she didn't tell them that she wasn't sure she did. "Well, I'm not sure that I exist." Dawn said slowly. It sounded rather foolish, now that she came to say it aloud.

"Oh? A sort of reverse solipsism, is it?" Greene commented. "Solipsism means-"

Dawn cut him off. "I know what solipsism means, thank you. And no, it isn't. If I was solipsistic, I'd think that only I existed and everyone else was a figment of my imagination. Therefore reverse solipsism would mean that I think that I'm a figment of everyone else's imaginations. Which I don't."

"So, would you mind telling me how exactly it is that you think you don't exist?" Greene asked, not missing a beat.

"Um... Well, see, I think I was created. By monks, from a ball of magical energy, to hide me from something. I don't know what, or why. I've been having these dreams..." Dawn said, blushing. She was fully aware of how silly it all sounded, which was partly why she was here. It sounded ridiculous, but she was nevertheless convinced that it was true.

Greene paused for a second. As a juvenile psychiatrist, the most common cases he had to deal with were anxiety or eating disorders, occasionally severe depression or a particularly bad case of OCD. Schizophrenia wasn't something that Greene commonly dealt with. While Dawn was in the right age group for schizophrenia to manifest, it generally started more gradually than this. Dawn seemed to be having full blown delusions, one of the primary symptoms of schizophrenia.

"So, these dreams. Would you mind telling me a little about them?" Greene asked. "When did they begin?"

"A few months ago. They're exceptionally vivid, just as if I was awake. They're all about these monks, and they use this ball of energy - me, I think - as a focal point for their rituals. Then, recently, I dreamt that they cast a spell to send me away, put me in human form as me, to hide me - hide the ball, they called it the Key - from something." Dawn replied self-consciously.

"Are these dreams the only reason that you believe... what you do?" Greene asked.

"No. I also know things. I've learnt languages that should take years of study in weeks, and become intimately familiar with certain historical periods. At the same time, other languages and other eras are more remote. I could learn them, you understand, but certainly not at the same rate I learned everything else." Dawn answered. She felt more comfortable talking about that - after all, she could easily demonstrate her aptitude. However, it would be far easier to shrug off the dreams as mere dreams if she couldn't.

"Your file says that you got a perfect score in your SAT's and were offered a scholarship to UCLA. Is that correct?" Greene questioned.

"It is."

"So you're evidently a bright girl." Greene expanded.

"I suppose so." Dawn mused, wondering where exactly Greene was going with this.

"Did your parents ever pressure you, or set out a plan for you to follow?" Greene asked.

"God, no. My mom was happy, of course, but she would've been happy if I'd just passed my SAT's normally. And my dad... I don't really think he cared. He's not really home all that much, and he was always closer to Buffy than me anyway." Dawn replied.

"And how did that make you feel? Your father's indifference, that is."

"Dunno. Never gave it much thought. I guess, after him spending so much time fussing over Buffy, it just seemed kind of natural that he didn't really notice I was there." Dawn answered.

Of course, the reason why Hank hadn't really been close to Dawn, had spent more time with Buffy, might be because Dawn actually hadn't been there. She might've been sewn into his memories, whereas Buffy had actually been in them. Dawn hadn't considered that possibility before. She wished she hadn't thought of it now. She certainly didn't mention her doubts to Greene, even though she was fairly certain it would come up in a later therapy session. This was, after all, only a preliminary discussion.

"And how's life at university? How are you handling the course load?" Greene asked, jotting down Dawn's response.

Dawn shrugged. "It's okay. The classes are interesting when they aren't ridiculously easy, which I've got to say is most of the time. The course load isn't bad, and the work's pretty easy anyway."

"And the people? Have you got friends, formed any relationships?"

"No, not really. I never really bothered at high school, 'cause, I mean, they're jerks. They teased me for being clever, and for not being all cool and fashionable. Same kind of thing at university really. I enjoy being with my sister the most, 'cause she's interesting. Even if she is years younger than me." Dawn replied. She didn't mention that she thought that the reason that she had never formed close attachments to anyone but her sister was because Buffy was the Slayer. Being around her was supposed to keep her safe from the Abomination, whatever that was. So no one else could fit into the picture.

"I see." Greene said neutrally, making a few final notes before saying "Alright then, it's about time for your physical, and then we'll show you around the ward."

Dawn swallowed, then nodded. It was too late to back out now.

~*~

As Dawn was having various scans done, she wasn't sure whether she wanted them to find something or not.

Dawn knew she had several of the symptoms of schizophrenia: delusions, hallucinations (in the form of exceptionally lucid repeated dreams), a lack of interest in people, and not emotionally caring about anything very much. She was pretty sure that none of her family had schizophrenia, which ruled out the cause being genetic. But she could still have something wrong with the structure of her brain, or something wrong with her neurotransmitters. Dawn was pretty sure that having the wrong quantity of dopamine or serotonin could lead to schizophrenia.

But Dawn didn't know if she wanted the scan to show either of those things or not. If they did, then she was crazy. She didn't want to be crazy, she really, really didn't, but if she was, then Dawn could be treated. She could get better.

But if they didn't find anything, then Dawn might be sane. She might really be the Key, and everything she knew - everything she thought she knew - was just a fabricated memory. Dawn, as she thought of herself, wouldn't exist. She would be a lie. Dawn didn't know if she could deal with that. She didn't know if she wanted to deal with that.

Of course, the causes of schizophrenia were still largely unknown. They might not find anything, but that didn't mean that Dawn wasn't crazy. So, even if the scans showed everything was normal, Dawn would still stay. See if she could get better. See if, eventually, someone could convince her of her own existence.

~*~

As it turned out, the scans showed nothing out of the ordinary.


	3. Chapter 3

Author's note: for the purposes of this story, crazy people cannot see that Dawn is the Key. There is a reason for this (other than the fact that I'd have very little plot if they could) but I can't tell you what it is just yet.

~*~

The psychiatric ward was like a hospital. Dawn hadn't expected that.

No, that wasn't actually true. Dawn _had_ expected it to be like a hospital. What she had _feared_ it would be like was a place filled with groaning, screaming mad people, or creepy Hannibal Lecter types. She was glad beyond expression that that wasn't the case.

They did take away her belt and shoelaces, though. They didn't need to explain why. Dawn knew they didn't want to leave her anything she could harm herself with, even if she was fairly sure she wouldn't do anything like that. It wasn't much of a problem, anyway - the belt was only decorative, and she had other shoes that didn't need laces.

Greene gave Dawn a tour, showing her where the individual and group therapy rooms were, the activity rooms (which Dawn understood as being where groups did activities to keep themselves grounded). She saw a few people in those rooms.

Greene also showed Dawn where the private rooms, one for each patient, were. There were only about six people there, with only around fifteen in the whole ward (the remaining nine Dawn had already glimpsed in the therapy and activity rooms). Greene had said that it got busier around Christmas, but he didn't explain why. Which was good, because Dawn didn't really want to know. She'd always enjoyed Christmas, and didn't want to have it spoiled for her.

Most of the patients kept to themselves and didn't introduce themselves to Dawn. Dawn didn't foist herself on them, either. Some of them were reading (Dawn wondered if there was a library) or doodling absently. Dawn didn't want to distract them from that.

Two girls were friendly - twins, as far as Dawn could tell. If it wasn't for the fact that they were both monstrously thin, Dawn would've wondered why they were there.

The last patient before Greene was to show Dawn her own room caught her attention. She was a redhead, but her back was to Dawn so she couldn't see any more of her.

"That's Claudia Donovan." Greene said in response to Dawn's questioning glance. "Our resident mathematical genius."

Dawn had already guessed that. Stuck to the wall in front of Claudia was a very large piece of paper, covered in a near-illegible scrawl of much crossed out and re-written numbers and symbols. Claudia was staring at it as though it held the answer to everything. To her, perhaps it did.

Dawn noticed that Claudia was tapping her thumb against each of her fingers, moving from little to index finger before starting again. Dawn realised that this could easily be a symptom of a neurosis of some kind, but Dawn thought that it might be far simpler than that. Dawn thought it was a simple displacement activity. Dawn had one of those herself - she had a tendency to chew her hair when thinking hard, or when she was nervous, and she kept it long especially for that purpose.

Before Greene could stop her, Dawn had opened the door and was standing just behind Claudia, examining the sheet in closer detail. Greene didn't know what to do - Claudia might not like having someone observing her work (Greene didn't know - he'd tried to talking to her about it, but she'd always clammed up and looked like she was about to cry) but, on the other hand, Dawn's file indicated that she was _very_ good at all this maths and physics stuff. It was beyond Greene, or indeed any of the other staff. Then again, it was the workings of a schizophrenic, so perhaps that was unsurprising. Greene settled for waiting to see how things panned out.

After a few minutes of trying to decipher Claudia's scrawl, Dawn pointed to a cluster of symbols and said "Your result here is off by 0.006."

Claudia made no response, so Dawn left quietly. Glancing back, she did see that Claudia had stopped drumming her fingers together. Dawn smiled.

~*~

Dawn sat in her room, thinking. She had been there for a couple of hours, now.

At first, Dawn had been thinking about the numerous side effects of the antipsychotic medication Greene was prescribing her. None of it was very reassuring, but, on the other hand, she would rather deal with those symptoms than the fear that she didn't exist.

But most of the time she spent thinking about the reaction her family had had when Dawn had told them that she was dropping out of university to enter a psychiatric hospital.

Dawn had been pretty sure that Buffy had known, or suspected, that she would do something like that, given that Dawn had told her sister about her fears earlier. Buffy had been quiet and calm, squeezing her sister's hand reassuringly. Dawn had been grateful to her for that.

Neither of her parents had been remotely prepared. Hank had been angry, saying that it was nothing, she was throwing her life away, she was just stressed by university life and she should just buck up and get over it.

Joyce wasn't nearly as brash as that. She just suggested that Dawn should merely see a psychiatrist whilst continuing to study. However, she had seemed to understand the situation when Dawn explained in greater detail about her psychosis. She'd been supportive.

Hank hadn't been. Somehow, he'd gotten it into his head that, in some way, Dawn was striking back at him for something he'd done. It clearly wasn't, it had nothing to do with him, and Dawn tried to explain that to him, but Hank didn't really seem to pay attention.

Hank and Joyce got into a big argument about that. While that was going on, Buffy and Dawn had walked away unnoticed, and talked a little bit. Not about the psych hospital, but just about ordinary, everyday things. Dawn had enjoyed that more than she could say.

Dawn was still slightly guilty that she had left that night without actually saying goodbye to her parents. She hadn't wanted to part on such poor terms, but she could tell that the argument wasn't about her. Not at all. She was just the catalyst. So Dawn had left them to get on with it.

Dawn's rather depressing thoughts were interrupted by a timid knock on the door. Dawn jumped at the sudden noise before seeing that it was Claudia at the door. Dawn, not bothering to get up, gestured for the girl to come in.

Claudia was younger than Dawn was, she noticed. Perhaps by as much as two years. And there was something, some fragility about her, which made her seem younger still.

Claudia hovered shyly by the door. "Um, hi." Claudia said quietly. "I'm Claudia."

"Dawn." said Dawn. "Hey, would you mind coming in? You're making me nervous, lurking in the doorway like that."

Claudia came in, a little way. "So, um, I wanted to thank you. For helping with the calculations." Claudia muttered. Dawn noticed she was pushing her thumb against each of her fingers again. Almost like an abacus, Dawn thought.

"What were they for?" Dawn asked guardedly, perfectly prepared for Claudia not to answer. "The calculations, I mean."

Claudia let out a melancholy sigh. Dawn guessed that, whatever those calculations were, they were at the centre of the reason for Claudia being here. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Dawn spread her hands. "I'm in a psychiatric hospital. I'd believe anything you say."

Claudia looked sceptical, but she felt that she owed Dawn something for her help. "Teleportation. I'm working on teleporting someone."

"How's that working out?" Dawn asked.

Claudia examined Dawn closely to see if there was any evidence that the other woman was sending her up. She couldn't find any. "It's not."

Dawn nodded. "Fair enough."

Claudia lost it. It wasn't really Dawn's fault. It was a combination of Claudia's medication, her frustration that she was getting nowhere with her brother's research and the fact that someone had just waltzed in and spotted a mistake even though Claudia had been staring at the same page for hours and not seen it.

"That's alright for you to say." Claudia spat. "You're probably just some depressive with overly worried parents who decided to lock you away. You don't get it."

Dawn took this calmly. "Schizophrenic, actually. And my parents would rather I saw a psychiatrist rather than checked myself in here."

Claudia sagged in surprise. Up until then, she had been the only schizophrenic in the ward. She hadn't expected that Dawn would be like her. "Oh." Claudia said, the word slipping out involuntarily. "Sorry."

Dawn shrugged. "It's okay, really. So this teleportation stuff is driving you nuts, huh?" she said.

Claudia laughed shortly. Then she was surprised that she had. It had been such a long time since she had done anything like that. "You could say that, yeah."

Claudia didn't want to tell Dawn about... the other thing. She didn't even want to think about the other thing herself. The mere possibility that it was true was too frightening to contemplate, which was why she was here.

"I'm here because I think I'm a ball of energy shaped into human form by monks in order to hide me from something evil." Dawn volunteered. She didn't see any reason why she should hide something like that.

"Got a persecution complex going." Claudia commented. "Good stuff. Even I don't have that."

Dawn looked at her in surprise. "You what? You're - you're schizophrenic too?"

Claudia blinked. "Well, yes. I'm sure I said. Or Doc said."

"No, you didn't. Neither of you did." Dawn replied. "Can I ask...?"

Claudia shook her head. "Sorry, no. Maybe once I get to know you a little."

Dawn nodded. Need for privacy - she understood that.

Nevertheless, Dawn did question Claudia about the calculations, and Claudia answered as best she could (her brother's notes were incomplete, so she was struggling to fill in the gaps as best she could). Eventually, Claudia went and got her sheet and laid it out on the floor, and the pair pored over it together.


	4. Chapter 4

Claudia never really got on with people. Honestly, she'd never tried to make much of an effort. People had an alarming tendency to die if she got close to them.

Or possibly die. Like her brother, Joshua. He couldn't still be alive, not really, not after all these years. And, when she had seen him (hallucinated him) he still looked the same as when she'd last seen him, all those years ago, before he had tried to teleport himself, against the Professor's advice. He was why Claudia was in the psychiatric hospital in the first place. Because she knew that she couldn't possibly be seeing him. Yet she did.

Anyway since Claudia's brother had died (he had to have died. Claudia couldn't live with herself if she'd left him trapped in some kind of limbo for years. No, it was better that he was dead, and she was crazy) Claudia hadn't really trusted anyone. She'd never been close to her foster parents, never made the effort. Thankfully, neither had they. Claudia didn't know what she would have done if they had tried to take Joshua's place.

Claudia did like computers. They didn't die - and if they did, she could fix them. They didn't do dangerous experiments and die in an accident. Her parents had died in accident, too. Claudia hadn't seen them appear to her, not like Joshua. She hoped they wouldn't. They had died when she was too young to remember them, really. If they were figments of her diseased mind, would they appear as insubstantial shades of the people they had once been? Would they just be fragments, the splinters of memories that Claudia still clung to for comfort when the drugs drove her to pace restlessly throughout the night?

No, it was better that the dead not bother the living. Unfortunately for Claudia, Joshua had ignored that.

(That is, if he was dead).

Claudia didn't trust people. She didn't trust them not to abandon her. And she didn't trust herself, didn't trust her own thoughts to be real. She only really trusted computers, because they were reliable. They'd never let her down yet.

So Claudia found that she was surprised to enjoy working through her attempt at recreating Joshua's calculations with Dawn. It wasn't just that Dawn appeared to be a human calculator, and could work through problems in seconds that would take Claudia minutes. If she hadn't been where she was, Claudia knew she could've written a program to do that, if there wasn't one already.

No, Claudia enjoyed the fact that Dawn asked no questions. She didn't ask why she was so obsessed with teleportation. She didn't ask about the tear stains that had made the ink run on the paper, making Claudia's already untidy scrawl almost unreadable, even to her.

Dawn just sat on the floor next to Claudia and worked through the calculations bit by bit. They talked about substituting parts of the formula, rearranging it, editing pieces and adding equations elsewhere. If Claudia was honest, it was like working with herself. When she'd been sane, that is. Then, Claudia could've thrown herself into her latest program with abandon, just like Dawn was doing now. She would set herself a challenge just to see if she could do it. Of course, these days, worrying about how to make the equation work so that she could see, once and for all, whether Joshua really was stuck on the other side or not filled her every waking moment. That, and wondering what she would do if she found that she was sane after all, and had left her brother stuck in some pocket dimension for years. Or if he wasn't there after all.

At that thought, a horrible sensation of dread crept over Claudia. Dawn had already admitted that she was here because she didn't think that she existed.

What if she didn't? What if Claudia was, right now, hallucinating the entire experience? What if Dawn wasn't real, just some part of Claudia's mind, some manifestation of her old self conjured up to comfort her? Claudia had, after all, had hallucinations before (or possibly not, but that was why she was here, to see if treatment would make them go away). Claudia couldn't help but think that Dawn could so easily be one. It would prove that Claudia hadn't actually seen Joshua at all, and she was just schizophrenic.

But, faced with the possibility that she might not be, Claudia wanted to be sane more than anything.

Claudia sat up, face ashen. Dawn didn't notice, absorbed as she was in a particularly knotty problem.

"Are you real?" Claudia asked in a breathy voice, sure that she didn't want to hear the answer.

Of course, Dawn couldn't possibly know that Claudia was thinking all of that. So she took the question at face value, and mulled it over. It was something she'd thought about a lot, since the dreams had started.

"I think so." Dawn said, slowly. "Now, at least. But the question is, did I exist a few months ago? I think I didn't exist until the moment that I dreamed I had been made."

Dawn didn't always think that. Sometimes she thought that she had always existed, and she was crazy to think otherwise. But even then, there was still a nagging doubt at the back of her mind. Other times, she thought that she had come into existence only a handful of minutes before, and that the monks had gotten the spell wrong somehow, meaning that she knew what they had done. It was ridiculously disorientating when Dawn thought that, and she always made the effort to immediately think about something else before she got incredibly depressed that her entire life hadn't even happened.

"Did I make you?" Claudia said in a barely audible whisper. "Are you in my head?"

Dawn froze, and her mind went blank. She'd thought that Claudia was stable. She had certainly seemed to be until now. Dawn hadn't the faintest idea how to deal with this situation. She had enough problems dealing with her own existential crisis. After all, she wouldn't be here if she could handle it by herself.

So Dawn did the only thing she could think of and swept Claudia up into a hug.

"I don't think so. I'm not even entirely sure I'm in my own head, let alone someone else's." Dawn said, trying not to panic. Claudia was stiff, unyielding in her arms, immune to her (admittedly rather poor) attempt at comforting.

What Claudia was thinking was that she wouldn't have done that. She wouldn't have hugged anyone, not for any reason. She hadn't since Joshua had... gone. She didn't like touching people unless she had to. She couldn't imagine a hallucination being any different.

And Claudia wanted to take comfort in that, so very much. She wanted it to be proof that Dawn was a separate person. But a treacherous voice in her head pointed out that hallucinations wouldn't be what she would expect. Claudia had certainly never expected that Joshua would appear to her before he actually had. Compared to that, being hugged by a hallucination was fairly commonplace.

Dawn let go. She wished Buffy was here. She would know what to say, what to do. Dawn couldn't prove to Claudia that she wasn't a hallucination - it was impossible to prove that anything existed beyond oneself.

Ah.

"Listen. I can't prove I'm real. I can't even prove that to myself, let alone to you. But if you start questioning me, then you may as well start questioning whether anything exists. Whether everything exists. And you'll never stop. And trust me, that way madness lies. Well, more madness than is already here. So, unless it's obviously outrageous, I'd say assume that it's real." Dawn said with some satisfaction. She just hoped that Claudia was in a state when (rather fuzzy) logic might actually help her.

Claudia stared at Dawn for several long seconds. Dawn found that she couldn't meet her intense gaze (she imagined that it must be what a microbe would feel like if it could look up and see a human peering at it through a microscope) so she looked everywhere else but at Claudia.

Then Claudia laughed, surprising herself and Dawn in equal measures. "So you're saying that the only thing I should question the reality of is myself." she said.

Dawn was pretty certain that that _hadn't_ been what she had said, but she couldn't for the life of her remember what her point had actually been. It had just been something that she'd made up in the hopes of cheering the younger woman up. Something to do with solipsism, she thought. But whatever it was, it had done what she had wanted it to do. "Well, if that stops you from thinking I don't exist, sure, that's what I said." Dawn said lightly. "I don't think I could take it if someone else thought that too."

As much as Dawn wished she was joking, she was fairly sure that was true. Her hold on her own reality was tenuous at best - she didn't think she could cope with someone else doubting it too.

On the other hand, Claudia was happy. Well, as happy as she had been since her first hallucination. She was pretty sure that was what it had been, now. It was simply too - how had Dawn put it? - too _outrageous_ to imagine otherwise. And, on the plus side, she'd gained a new... acquaintance, whose existence might be uncertain, but Claudia wasn't going to doubt that. Dawn was right, there was no point questioning whether everything she saw was there or not.

No, it was more profitable (if such a description was even valid in such a context) to question her own perception of reality. To assume that everything Claudia saw was real unless it was too _outrageous_ not to be.

Yes, Claudia could live with that.


	5. Chapter 5

There were good days and there were bad days.

On the good days, Dawn and Claudia would talk and laugh and take their antipsychotics uncomplainingly. Dawn would feel as though she was edging ever closer to the moment when she could conclusively say that she no longer believed that she had been made by monks, and that she was a normal girl with normal memories.

On these days, Claudia would feel as though her visions of her brother were just brought on by her guilt at his death, and not him trying to contact her. And Claudia would feel as though she could actually tell Dawn exactly what had happened to her brother, tell her exactly why she was here. On those days, they would slowly work their way through the complicated, knotty formula.

But on the bad days, Dawn couldn't leave her room for fear that she would cease to exist, or that the world would, or both. She would be afraid that everyone's memories of her were fake, and that no one really knew her, and she didn't really know anyone. And because she was afraid that the Abomination, whatever that was, would get her if she moved. As time went by, these became more and more common.

On these days, Claudia thought that Joshua was around every corner. She could hear his voice as clear as day, accusing her of leaving him trapped somewhere between dimensions. The guilt would build up and up, until she would curl up on the floor and bawl her eyes out, and she would try to avoid anyone for fear that they would discover her secret guilt and would abandon her because of it. Just like her brother had, and her parents, and the Professor.

It was on the evening of a good day when an orderly declared "Summers! You've got a visitor!"

Claudia made to leave, Dawn grabbed her sleeve "Please stay. I don't know how this is going to work out." Dawn pleaded. None of her family had been to visit her since she had checked herself in, not even Buffy. She didn't know how she would cope with seeing them now.

Buffy walked into the room. She looked sad, and she didn't even seem to notice that Claudia was there. "How are you doing, Dawnie?" Buffy asked tentatively.

Dawn chewed her hair as she thought about how to answer that. Doing that always made her feel a little better. "You came on a good day." she said. Dawn didn't expand on that, because she was _certain_ that Buffy didn't want to know the details.

Claudia thought it might be an opportune moment to point out her presence. "Hi, I'm Claudia. You must be Buffy."

"Um, yes. Yes I am." Buffy replied. She looked uncertain as to how to deal with Claudia. Dawn wasn't really surprised. Even though Buffy was the Slayer (although sometimes, on her worst days, Dawn doubted even that, despite the evidence she had seen) visiting the psych ward was so far out her comfort zone that Dawn was proud that Buffy had even managed to come. "Um, would you mind if I talked to Dawn for a bit?"

Claudia looked at Dawn inquiringly. Dawn chewed her hair for a while before nodding. She was having a good day, so it was unlikely that she would exhibit any of the more alarming symptoms of schizophrenia.

After Claudia left, Buffy came and sat next to Dawn on her bed. "You know, Mom wanted to come and see you too, but I thought it would probably be best if I spoke to you first." Buffy said.

Dawn didn't reply. She wasn't surprised that Hank hadn't wanted to visit her.

"So, anyway, I wanted to tell you that we're moving. Mom's been offered a job, she's going to run an art gallery. In Sunnydale. It's only a few hours away." Buffy assured.

"But Mom doesn't work." Dawn commented absently. "Dad does."

Buffy winced. She had hoped not to get to that part so soon. Or possibly not get to it at all. "Um, yeah. About that. See, the thing is..." Buffy hedged, before deciding just to go all out and say it "They're getting divorced. Apparently Dad's been having a fling with his secretary, and Mom's just had enough of it. So, yeah."

Dawn suddenly found it very hard to breathe. She tried to force some air into her lungs, but she just felt like she was choking on it. She felt as though all the air was being squeezed out of her lungs by the pain in her chest. She didn't say anything, though. The only outward sign she gave was that she stopped chewing her hair.

"Dawn?" Buffy asked, concerned. When Dawn didn't respond, Buffy repeated herself, her voice climbing an octave in worry.

An orderly poked his head around the door. He had clearly been there the entire time. He said "Miss Summers, I think it's about time you left now."

Buffy got up reluctantly and looked back at her sister, worry evident in her eyes. She looked as though she was going to say something, thought better of it, and left. She didn't look back, because she didn't want Dawn to see the tears trickling down her face.

It was about thirty seconds later when Claudia appeared in the doorway. "So, that was your sister. How was the visit?"

When Dawn didn't say anything, Claudia looked closer at the older woman. "God, you're shaking!" Claudia exclaimed, striding across the room to sit next to Dawn. "What happened?"

Dimly, Dawn was aware of Claudia speaking. But it felt so far away. Even further away than her shaking body and aching chest and difficulty breathing and the choking sensation in her throat. She thought that it was finally happening, that what she had most feared was coming true: she was ceasing to exist.

At the back of her head, a treacherous voice suggested that it might not be such a bad thing if that were true.

For a second, Dawn was aware that she was being tilted sideways. It was extremely disorientating, and made her feel sick. Then she realised that Claudia had pulled her sideways and leant her head on her shoulder and was gently stroking Dawn's hair and making comforting noises.

Claudia didn't really know what she was doing. She knew she had to comfort Dawn, but she didn't really know how. So she was doing what she remembered Joshua doing when she had been very young and plagued by nightmares of the car accident that had killed her parents. She didn't know if it would work. She hoped so.

Dawn never knew how long her panic attack lasted. It could've been an eternity. Claudia would later tell her that it had lasted only around five minutes, but Dawn didn't think that could possibly be true. Five minutes couldn't possibly last for so long a time.

Eventually, Dawn stopped trembling, the pain in her chest lessened, she could breathe again, and she no longer found herself separated from the sensations of her body.

"You just had a panic attack." Claudia pointed out, and then kicked herself for doing so. How could she be so insensitive?

Dawn didn't mind. She realised that she would never again sneer at the fainting damsels in distress in movies. If a panic attack felt like that, she was hardly surprised that they swooned all over the place.

"Do you want to tell me what happened?" Claudia asked gently. "It's fine if you don't, too, but, um, yeah, you could, if you wanted to. Tell me, that is." Claudia stammered to a halt.

It was several long seconds before Dawn spoke. Claudia wasn't sure that she would. "It's my fault." Dawn said hoarsely. "My parents are getting divorced and it's my fault."

"No, it isn't-"

"Yes, it is! Dad blames me for being here, thinks it's just some stupid childish whimsy. Got into a big argument with Mom about it. Then BAM-" Claudia jumped violently as Dawn crashed her fist against the bed "-a few weeks later and they're getting divorced. How is that not my fault?"

Claudia opened her mouth to make some asinine comment about how Dawn hadn't actually forced her parents to divorce, then shut it again. She knew full well that that would be exactly the wrong thing to say.

Claudia tried to remember the kind of thing that Dawn had said to get when they had first met. Perhaps if she said something like that, she could help Dawn. Dawn had certainly helped her.

Ah. She had it.

"You know, this formula we are working on, it's based on my brother's work. It's based on his notes, his calculations." Claudia said, then took a deep steadying breath before continuing. "A few years ago, he tried to put them into action, to test them. He tried to teleport himself. It didn't work. He died." Claudia's voice cracked on the last word. "He was declared dead. And for years, I blamed myself. I thought that if only I had stopped him, made him stop, then he'd still be ali- still be here today. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I couldn't have stopped him. He was my older brother, and I was just a little girl. There was nothing I could've done. I realised that it wasn't my fault."

Claudia didn't mention the possibility that Joshua was trapped between dimensions, or that now, instead of being guilty that she hadn't stopped him from getting himself stuck there she was guilty that she left him there for years. She wasn't quite ready to tell Dawn that yet.

Then she realised that that wasn't quite true. She was perfectly ready to tell Dawn. But, right at this moment, Dawn wasn't ready to hear her.

Dawn thought about saying that it wasn't the same, that she could've been a better daughter, that if she wasn't crazy everything would be just fine. But then she realised that it wasn't her fault she was crazy. She couldn't have stopped things from happening the way they had.

It wasn't her fault.

"Claudia?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you."


	6. Chapter 6

Dawn walked into Claudia's room one evening and asked "Am I the same age I was yesterday?"

This wasn't an unusual occurrence. While Claudia seemed stable, as schizophrenics go - she only occasionally hallucinated her brother trying to contact her, whereas Dawn had a persecution complex, a tendency to shift randomly from thought to thought and delusions of grandeur.

It had to be said that Dawn tended to disbelieve that the Abomination was chasing her and that she was the Key, at least around Claudia. When Dawn did believe, she tried to isolate herself from everyone, for fear that they might be the Abomination and they would... well, Dawn didn't actually know what the Abomination would do, but she knew it couldn't be good.

So, the only one of Dawn's symptoms that Claudia saw regularly was her jumping from thought to thought like a frog from lillypad to lillypad. Claudia had become pretty used to that by now, and so she didn't even bother to look up when she replied "No, you're a day older."

Dawn waved a hand, dismissing the point. "No, think about it. If I was created just this morning, then I'm not the same age as I was yesterday because I wasn't alive yesterday. Or, if I'm a created thing, am I even aging at all? Maybe I only remember aging, but I've actually always been the same age I am now." Dawn said, thinking aloud. "By the way, your nose is bleeding."

"Is it?" Claudia sat up and scrubbed at it. It was true. She hadn't had a nosebleed for years. "Blast."

There was an odd tearing sound. It wasn't very loud, but it instantly filled Claudia with foreboding. "No no no no. I was doing so well. It can't be." she said rapidly in a low monotone, eyes swivelling frantically around the room as though for the source of the noise - or, if that noise was what Claudia thought it was, for an exit.

Then there was Joshua, floating in the air, wrapped in that same coruscating golden light that he had been last time Claudia had hallucinated him. Claudia could never tell whether he was made of the same light or if it merely covered him. His legs were angled towards the ceiling, and his hand was stretching down towards Claudia, as though he was trying to grab her. He seemed to be saying something, but no words came from his mouth. As usual, he couldn't seem to reach Claudia, and Claudia made no attempt to reach him. He couldn't be there. It wasn't possible.

Then Joshua was gone, and Claudia was left there staring blankly at the space where he had been, blood still trickling from her nose and her head was pounding.

"So, do men made of light often appear to you?" Dawn said, wide eyed. She knew she probably shouldn't make light of the situation, but she didn't know what else to do. This was clearly something to do with why Claudia was here (she still hadn't told Dawn the exact reason) and Claudia looked like she had seen a ghost. Dawn couldn't think of a better response. Besides, she was in shock herself.

Claudia leapt up and stood in front of Dawn. Right in front of Dawn. Dawn stopped breathing, because if she did her breath would wash over Claudia's face, and that would terribly embarrassing.

Claudia said "You couldn't have seen him." in a voice so soft that Dawn almost didn't hear her despite the fact that there was only an inch or so of space between them.

Claudia touched Dawn on the arm. Gently. The same way that a blind person might feel their way around a room - making sure that every object was actually there. "He's not real. He's just a, just a hallucination. He wasn't there. You couldn't have seen him, because he wasn't there."

Dawn wanted to back away. She didn't want to deal with this. She couldn't, she didn't know how. But Claudia was her friend. She couldn't leave her like this.

So Dawn, instead of stepping backwards, leant forward slightly, resting her forehead on Claudia's. Claudia flinched, but she didn't back away. Dawn didn't know that this was because Claudia was having difficulty knowing what was real and what wasn't at that moment. If someone else could see Joshua, then he was real. And the walls that Claudia had carefully built to prevent her from believing that her brother was still alive, and trapped in limbo, were crumbling. And she didn't know how to deal with that.

But Claudia believed that Dawn existed, even though Dawn wasn't sure. She had seen her every day for weeks, gotten to know her, talked to her. She knew Dawn was real. So she stuck close to her, like a limpet onto a rock. Her rock of reality. Dawn would've appreciated the irony, if she knew.

"I know that there are things out there that are so weird that it is nearly impossible to believe they exist." Dawn said, thinking of vampires and her petite sister who was destined to fight them. She tried to make her voice sound as strong and as comforting as she could. She wasn't sure whether that worked. "But that doesn't meant that they don't. We've both seen that man of light. And while we may not be the most qualified to judge what is real and what isn't" Dawn said, a bitter smile twisting her lips "neither of us talked about it before we saw it. It couldn't have been a hallucination. So, whatever that was, I'm pretty sure he was really there."

Claudia took a step back. She didn't notice Dawn nearly toppling forward because she was no longer leaning against Claudia's forehead to keep herself balanced.

"That was Josh." Claudia said, in a whisper that Dawn didn't hear. She repeated herself in a louder voice. "That was my brother."

Dawn cocked her head. "Joshua? That was Joshua, the one who died in the teleportation experiment?" Suddenly it all clicked into place. "That's what you're doing, isn't it? Trying to fix the formula so you can bring him back."

"Yes." Claudia said in a small voice.

Dawn nodded decisively, and began chewing her hair. "We've got to get you out of here."

Claudia didn't reply, she just looked at Dawn quizzically. She began tapping her thumb against each of her fingers as she always did when she was nervous. This time she was doing it so fast her fingers were a blur.

Dawn, in answer to Claudia's unasked question, said "Well, you can hardly save your brother from in here, can you?"

"I?" Claudia murmured.

Dawn looked baffled for a moment, then realization dawned. "I can't help you, Claudia. You're sane. Everything you thought wasn't real is. But I - I'm not. I can barely last a few days without having to shut myself away from everyone. I have to stay here until I'm better." Dawn said gently.

"What?" Claudia blinked owlishly. "But I - I wouldn't know where to start. I can't just up and leave and save Josh. I don't know how."

"Finish the formula. It's nearly done, anyway."

"But I-" Claudia began, but she never got the chance to finish her sentence.

"Lights out!" an orderly called.

"We'll talk more tomorrow, okay?" Dawn said, touching Claudia's shoulder reassuringly.

~*~

Next morning, when Dawn went to Claudia's room, it was empty. Claudia shouldn't be in a therapy session at this time of day, and Dawn didn't think that she would've checked out without saying goodbye. Besides, she didn't think that it was even possible to check out so quickly.

So Dawn went to find Greene. She was sure that he would know where Claudia was.

It didn't take her very long to find him. "Doctor?" Dawn called. "Have you seen Claudia?"

Greene's face crumpled, expressing some emotion that Dawn couldn't identify. Sadness? Grief? Pity?

"She tried to hang herself during the night. She's fine, there was no harm done, but she's being prepared for electroconvulsive therapy now."


	7. Chapter 7

Author's note: in the USA, a court hearing is required to give a patient electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) without their consent. I've skipped that, in this story, but otherwise I've made it as realistic as my rather limited knowledge allows. Claudia, by dint of having tried to kill herself and not having responded to other treatments (because she's actually sane), is a candidate for ECT after all.

As far as I know, it isn't made clear canonically which university has Joshua's lab in it. So it's reasonable to assume that he went to Caltech.

~*~

Claudia never remembered the two weeks of electroconvulsive therapy. Not fully. The closest analogy she could find was when she had had an awful fever when she had been young and she'd said things in her delirious state that she had only half remembered once the fever broke.

She remembered having three courses of ECT a week, but couldn't remember preparing for it or the time immediately afterwards. She remembered being asked questions in the days between treatments, but she couldn't remember what they were or what she had said.

Claudia barely remembered the week or so after the course, but she dimly recalled that she tried to sound as sane as possible.

Apparently, she was successful. The ward discharged her, and Claudia was given antipsychotics and told that she should return for follow up therapy in six months, or sooner if her symptoms returned.

Claudia had been moved to a separate area of the facility where she had been kept under close surveillance to make sure that she didn't try to commit suicide again. As a result, she hadn't seen Dawn for three weeks. Nor did she attempt to see Dawn upon leaving. Dawn had abandoned her. Like Joshua. Like her parents. Like the Professor.

So, when Claudia left the building and saw Dawn sitting outside on an old camping chair, absently toying with an empty sandwich packet, Claudia wondered if she was actually sane at all. Dawn had told her that she was going to stay and be treated at the ward. So she couldn't be here, outside. So Claudia must be imagining her.

Dawn's face lit up like a Christmas tree upon seeing Claudia. "Hey, Claudia! I thought they'd discharge you when you finished your treatment, but then I didn't know how long that would be, and it went on longer than I thought it would so I wasn't sure you were ever going to be released and" Dawn took a deep breath "I'm so glad you're out!"

Claudia couldn't be bothered to sift through Dawn's ramblings and figure out what she was actually saying. "What are you doing here?" she asked coldly.

"Waiting for you." said Dawn as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Yeah, well, I'm here." Claudia said, striding off towards the car park. She didn't wait for Dawn to follow, but she wasn't unduly surprised when Dawn hurried after her, trying to fold her camping chair as she went. "You don't have to wait any more. You can go back now."

"See, I've kind of changed my mind about that." Dawn murmured distractedly. She was struggling with the camping chair - she'd managed to fold and unfold it every day for the last three weeks but she couldn't do it now? "I thought "Hey, I'll still be schizo in a few weeks, whereas Claudia needs my help now. So, really, why not help her?""

Claudia stopped so abruptly that Dawn overshot her and had to turn back. "You thought you'd take pity on me. Feel sorry for the girl with the brother stuck in between dimensions, the one who's so guilty about leaving him there that if she stops moving forward for a moment she won't start again. You thought that you'd help the girl who tried to kill herself because not a single person sticks by her. Because you felt guilty about it." Claudia said flatly.

The words hit Dawn like blows. The lack of emotion, the simple statement of fact, robbed her of her breath. Eventually, Dawn said "Yes. I feel guilty that I wanted to leave you, so you had to go and do the impossible all by yourself. Yes, I felt ashamed about it. I want to help you, because I couldn't help my sister, and I sure as Hell can't help myself. Yes, if you hadn't tried to hang yourself, I'd still be in the clinic. And I'd be regretting the fact that I didn't go with you, just like I started to regret it as soon as I said it. Because you're my friend, Claud. I might make bad decisions, but that isn't one of them."

Claudia came to a stop near a car. It wasn't her car, but it was going to be. A couple of years ago, Claudia had spent six months on the streets of Minneapolis. As a result, she could break into and hotwire certain makes of car (like this one), and she could drive, although not legally. She was also a fairly proficient pickpocket. "Yeah, well, it's a bit late now." Claudia said bitterly. "You left. You walked away. You can't just walk back."

And Claudia slid into the car, hotwired it and drove off leaving Dawn standing in the car park.

~*~

It was after about ten minutes of driving towards Josh's lab at Caltech that Claudia began to admit to herself that maybe, just maybe, she had done the wrong thing.

Sure, Dawn had left her. Sure, yet another abandonment had driven her to a dark place, and that combined with the overwhelming guilt at having left Joshua trapped in between dimensions for years made taking her own life seem like a good idea, like the only way to make the pain stop.

But Dawn had come back, which no one else ever had. She'd apologized, and tried to make amends. And Claudia had just abandoned her. Claudia felt guilty about that, even whilst she knew full well what had driven her to do so.

Claudia had been abandoned enough times to be sure that it was never, ever a good thing. And it was that, more than anything, which made her turn around and drive back.

If Dawn had moved during the half an hour or so that Claudia had been gone, Claudia couldn't see any sign of it. She was just standing there, staring off into space. Claudia shivered slightly, despite herself. She'd seen Dawn when she was on her bad days, although Dawn had always tried to stay away from her and not subject her to that. Claudia should've known better not to just run off like that.

Dawn got into the seat next to Claudia and said brightly "Where are we going?"

For all that Dawn was trying to seem cheerful, Claudia could tell that her driving away had hurt her. "So, you're not going to rant at me?" Claudia said timidly.

Dawn looked at her sidelong for a moment before saying "I was planning on bottling it up and then exploding at you at some point in the future."

"How's that working for you?" Claudia said, knowing that she was avoiding the issue at hand and hating herself for it.

Dawn gave a half-hearted shrug. "Don't know. Never really had anything to bottle up, before."

They drove in silence for another few minutes before Dawn said quietly "I had another panic attack, you know. When you left."

"Look, Dawn, I know I shouldn't have-"

"I'm not blaming you, Claud. Who'd want someone like me following them around? I'm unstable."

"Dawn-"

"But I need someone around. Because if you're not there, talking to me, reminding me that I exist, then what if I wake up in the morning and I don't? I need someone to keep me grounded." Dawn said. Although she tried, she couldn't keep her voice from quavering slightly. "So, please. Don't leave again."

Claudia didn't speak for a while after that. Eventually she said "I know you exist. See, when you saw Josh, I believed you, believed that he was real, even though it was so - so _outrageous_ that it couldn't possibly be real. Then you left. So I thought that you'd seen the craziness that I was involved with and you decided to just stay as far away as you possibly could. You were someone who had seen just the edges, and you couldn't deal with it. And here I am, stuck in the middle of it, so what chance do I have of dealing with it? So I thought it would just be better if I didn't."

Claudia thought for a moment, composing herself for a moment. She didn't look at Dawn. She didn't think she would be able to finish if she did. "But if you're here, and you see things and I see things and the things are outrageous, then I'm willing to believe that the things happened. But if you're not, then - I might be sane, Dawn, but I'm not really any more stable than you are."

Claudia took a deep breath, held it, looked at Dawn and said "So, please. Don't leave again."

Dawn looked back. Claudia couldn't read her expression, and she didn't try.

"Okay." Dawn said softly, barely audible over the car's engine. "I won't."

Claudia looked back at the road. "Neither will I."


	8. Chapter 8

"Damn it!" Claudia yelled, throwing her hands up in the air. Hands which just happened to be filled with sheets of notes written in her rather flowing scrawl, and Dawn's tight, cramped scrawl, and Josh's perfect handwriting. Of course, the paper went flying everywhere. "Why isn't it working?"

Dawn stood staring at the sheets of paper as they came floating gently down. "It's like confetti. I remember when I was a bridesmaid at a wedding - one of Dad's friends were getting married. I couldn't have been more than six. I took it all so seriously, but all I was doing was throwing confetti." Dawn said in a faraway voice.

Damn. Claudia knew that any moment Dawn would start wondering whether that had actually happened, and that would trigger one of her downswings, and they wouldn't be able to get anything done for the rest of the day. She needed to cut that off. It probably wasn't healthy, but then neither was running into her room and barricading the door.

"We need help with this." Claudia said, tapping her fingers together thoughtfully. "We've got the formula all sorted out, we've got the minerals found in Rheticus' compass, and Josh's equipment is still at the lab. We've got everything, but it still isn't working. So what do we do?"

Dawn stood very very still. If she was breathing, Claudia couldn't tell. Not even her eyes were moving. Unconsciously, Claudia held her breath in sympathy.

After several long moments, Dawn took a deep, shuddering breath and muttered "So. If I wasn't here, who would you turn to for help?"

"I'd track you down and get you to help anyway." Claudia said, putting a fake smile on her face.

She didn't want Dawn to go down that road, to wonder what things might be like if she wasn't here. Claudia had done that, and it had led to her trying to kill herself. Dawn didn't need that, not when she was already having wondering whether she truly existed or not. Claudia had to stop Dawn from thinking about what it would be like if whatever form of existence she had was terminated.

Dawn gave a quick answering smile, which was almost certainly as fake as Claudia's. "Play along, Claud. I'm not good enough to help you here. So who else would you get?"

"The Professor, I guess." Claudia said thoughtfully.

Dawn looked at her, silently urging her to go on.

"He was - well, he was a professor. Without him, I don't think Josh would've gone on with the experiment. He was so encouraging." Claudia said. Then she frowned. "He vanished right after the accident. Didn't even turn up at the - he vanished right after the accident."

"You think he went off to work on it in secret?" Dawn asked?

Claudia shrugged. "Sure, I guess. I mean, he had to feel guilty, right? And he was so sure it would work, so there's no reason he wouldn't try again."

"So, the question is, how do we find him?" Dawn asked, chewing her hair.

It had been six days since Claudia had left the institution. After stealing a car and driving to Josh's laboratory to pick up his notes, they'd driven back to Dawn's apartment near UCLA and abandoned the car. The apartment was small, but it had two bedrooms (Buffy had used to stay there occasionally) and the rent was paid until the end of the semester. It suited their needs.

Except that Dawn didn't have a computer. At least not here. She'd always used the ones at UCLA, or borrowed Joyce's if she was at home. She'd never felt the need for one herself. Unfortunately, given that Dawn had dropped out of UCLA (well, technically she had taken leave and had been told she could return when she was better) so she couldn't use a computer there, and given that driving to Sunnydale, having a tearful reunion with Buffy and Joyce (who Dawn hadn't told that she had left the institution) only to ask to use a computer so that her friend was could track down a professor to help them bring back her brother from another dimension would sound even crazier than it actually was.

All of this meant that Claudia wouldn't be able to use her hacking skills to find the Professor. Not unless they could gain access to a computer.

Fortunately, there was a computer in Joshua's lab. Unfortunately, it was old, and hadn't been used since before the accident. But Claudia was confident that she could fix it, if it broke down. She was, after all, good with computers.

"We need to get down to Caltech, and use Josh's computer." Claudia answered decisively.

Dawn raised an eyebrow. "Going to steal a car again?"

Claudia flashed a grin. "Well, we _could_ walk, but it would take ages."

Dawn hummed thoughtfully. "It would save us some aching feet, I suppose." she replied.

"Exactly." Claudia said innocently. Then she rather spoiled the effect by grinning wickedly.

"Alright." Dawn said wearily. "Just so long as I don't have to watch you do all your computer-y things. It gives me a headache."

Claudia cocked her head. "How do you know me doing computer-y things gives you a headache? You've never see me do them."

"Why do you think I don't I have a computer? _Me_ doing computer-y things gives me a headache, so I don't doubt that you will too." Dawn answered.

"Fine." Claudia said. "You can stay in the car if you like, stop someone stealing it-"

"Again."

"-while I do computer-y things."

~*~

While Claudia went off to do computer-y things, Dawn did indeed stay in the car.

Dawn was thinking about something that Claudia had said earlier - about how, if Dawn hadn't been there, Claudia would've tracked her down anyway. It reminded her of Claudia wondering if Dawn was a hallucination of hers when they had first met.

At the time, Dawn had dismissed that. She'd thought that her past hadn't even happened to her, let alone that she was someone else's hallucination.

Of course, it might seem odd that Claudia would hallucinate someone who was crazier than she was as someone to comfort her. Then Dawn shifted her perception and realised that, if she actually was Claudia's hallucination and she had only come into being upon meeting her, and her existential crisis had got entirely the wrong end of the stick, then Claudia wasn't sane. She was even less sane than Dawn was, if she had split of a separate part of her psyche to talk to.

Schizophrenics often created elaborate backgrounds to their delusions. Dawn knew that it was possible that Claudia could've created her and her entire past.

It might explain why she had a sister with such a ridiculous name as Buffy. Only someone really crazy could come up with that.

At first, Dawn felt the onset of a panic attack, before she realised that it didn't matter. It didn't matter if she was the hallucination of a schizophrenic girl or a ball of energy created by monks. Either was too outrageous to believe, and neither could be actively disproved. Not unless the Abomination showed up, that is.

Unfortunately, it wasn't just a case of picking her favourite delusion. Dawn had no doubt that she would have problems with both. She wished she could disbelieve either of them (preferably both) but she couldn't.

Dawn decided not to mention any of this to Claudia. Claudia had reached the point where she was willing to believe that anything that both she and Dawn saw together was real. If Dawn raised questions of her own existence, then Claudia would rapidly backslide. And if Dawn _was_ a hallucination created to comfort Claudia, then she would do her best to prevent that.

~*~

Claudia knew that teleporting took vast amounts of power. She also knew that, for the Professor to have disappeared as completely as he had, he would have needed to have been recruited by some secret organization or other.

Therefore, she needed to search the USA for unexplained power usage and hope that the Professor hadn't left the country.

As it turned out, there were quite a few such places. Most of them turned out to be military, and Claudia didn't bother hacking into them. She was no conspiracy nut. That said, if she couldn't find the Professor anywhere else, she would trawl through every last one of them looking for him.

Then Claudia came across an absolutely _massive_ power drain in South Dakota. As soon as she found that, Claudia had a hunch that the Professor would be there.

Unfortunately, the place had unbelievable encryption. Claudia soon lost track of time as she tried hacking in, being ever so careful not to leave any trace of her failed attempts at doing so. She didn't worry about leaving Dawn alone - Dawn knew where she was and would come and find her if she needed to.

It was about three and a half hours later that Claudia found her way in. She headed straight to the personnel files.

_Bering, Myka... Lattimer, Peter... _

Despite knowing (hoping) that she would find the Professor, her heart still leapt to her throat when she saw his file.

_Nielsen, Arthur._

Oddly, the file didn't mention anything that the Professor - Arthur - had done in the last 30 years. It detailed his personal details, and his work in the NSA, and then... nothing.

Claudia, afire with curiosity, delved into more files of this place - Warehouse 13, it turned out to be called - to see what exactly they were up to.

She promptly wished she hadn't. Because it was outrageous, couldn't possibly be true, she must've gone crazy (or never stopped being so), it couldn't be real, it just_couldn't_.

Because, as far as Claudia could tell, what the Warehouse did was find magical objects and seal them away from the world. Objects like Rheticus' compass.

Without Dawn there to see this and confirm that she wasn't crazy, Claudia didn't know what to do.

So she struck back the only way she knew how. Angry at a world that had (might have) such outrageous things in it, angry at Arthur for not having lifted a finger to help Joshua with any of this stuff, these _artefacts_ but most of all angry because she didn't know if the things she had just read were real or not, Claudia left a message for Arthur.

** Knock Knock**


	9. Chapter 9

Claudia planned a route from LA to Univille. They'd have to change cars - she really didn't want to be caught - but it was doable. It was about a day's journey, but still, doable. She'd try even if it wasn't.

Of course, getting there was fairly easy. Bringing the Professor back if he didn't want to help would be harder. Fortunately, Claudia had something that could help with that.

She went back to the car. Dawn had fallen asleep, curled into a tight ball in the back. Claudia didn't know how Dawn managed to look so small, to curl up so tight. At least the fragility that filled her in her waking life was gone when she slept. Except for the dreams. Dawn never spoke about the dreams, and Claudia could never bring herself to ask.

Claudia didn't wake her when she drove back to Dawn's flat. She would have carried her up the stairs like a child if she thought she could manage. Dawn needed sleep. Claudia didn't know how much her friend got - Dawn was always up before her, even though she didn't go to bed until after Claudia. Claudia remembered what that was like, remembered spending what felt like months in a waking stupor longing for the peaceful oblivion of sleep.

But, as small as Dawn looked in her foetal position, she was the same height and build as Claudia. Claudia couldn't carry her, so she woke Dawn up as gently as possible.

"Claud?" Dawn said tiredly, stretching like a cat. "Did you find him?"

"Yeah." Claudia said, but she didn't elaborate. She wouldn't until she'd thought about the artefacts. She wasn't sure she should tell Dawn about that - Dawn didn't need more crazy in her life. Neither did Claudia, for that matter, which was why she was, for the moment, flat out refusing to think about the possibility of magical artefacts. "C'mon. I'll tell you about it later. You look half-asleep." Claudia surprised herself by yawning hugely. "And I'll bet I do too."

~*~

After Dawn and Claudia retired to their separate bedrooms, Dawn didn't go to sleep. She was filled with a restless energy, a need to move, to act. It was probably the antipsychotics, Dawn thought. Unlike Claudia, she was still taking them. Because, unlike Claudia, she was schizophrenic. Or at least she hoped so. She would rather be crazy than a manifestation of Claudia's mind, or the Key. Crazy she could - well, she couldn't deal with it, because she couldn't quash the belief that she wasn't - but it made more sense. It was logical. And, eventually, hopefully, she could get over it.

Dawn couldn't prove that she was or wasn't the Key. Not unless some outside force showed up, like the monks or the Abomination.

But hallucinations weren't solid. They couldn't move things, couldn't touch things. They were insubstantial.

Dawn tried very, very hard not to think about the fact that she had already touched things, moved things, even when Claudia wasn't around.

So Dawn stood in the middle of her small room, closed her eyes and spun rapidly on the spot until she got dizzy and staggered drunkenly. She lashed out with a fist, and connected with a wall.

The shock of the blow jarred her arm and made her knuckles hurt. Her eyes flew open and Dawn stared at her hand as though she had never seen it before.

Dawn had hoped that she would hit something, but she wasn't sure that she would. She had thought that, if she punched fast enough without being sure if there was something in front of her or not, she might confuse Claudia's mind, leaving it so that it couldn't catch up with her actions and she would pass through something as though she were a ghost. Or an intangible hallucination.

Dawn did it again, and again, and again. Each time she hit one of the walls of her small room. She kept going, even though she felt sick from the dizziness, her shoulder and elbow ached from the repeated jolts, and the skin on her knuckled wore away and began to bleed gently.

Then, once, she didn't hit anything. Surprised, shocked out of the rhythmic, unthinking action that had occupied her body and her mind, Dawn stumbled and cracked her knee against her bed. With a yelp at the sudden, sharp pain, Dawn opened her eyes and flailed wildly to avoid crashing headfirst into the wall. She succeeded, and instead landed face down on her bed.

Daw began to laugh, quietly, the sound muffled by her pillow. For those few minutes, she hadn't wondered about her existence. She hadn't felt the gnawing fear that everything she knew about herself might be fake.

There had just been the pain. It was the first thing that Dawn had been able to control since finding that she was schizophrenic. The first thing that made a difference - not anti-psychotics, not therapy, and certainly not the sudden appearance of Joshua Donovan.

Dawn welcomed the pain, dwelt lovingly on every cut, every ache, and every blossoming bruise. She focused on them with such a single-minded intensity that she didn't think about anything else. Which was good. Thinking about things never worked out.

Besides, the curious euphoria that stole over Dawn had a calming effect, soothing her after close to a week with barely any sleep, a week of constantly striving not to let Claudia down by retreating to her room and locking herself away. Dawn went to sleep.

Dawn had thought that Claudia had been too deeply asleep to hear her thumping on the walls. She was wrong.

Claudia lay on her bed, eyes turned towards the ceiling but not really seeing it. She couldn't help Dawn. Dawn was doing everything she could to help Claudia become reunited with Josh, and Claudia couldn't help Dawn at all.

Dawn had said that she needed Claudia around to keep her sane. Claudia feared that she wasn't enough.

~*~

In the morning, Claudia didn't ask about the scrapes on Dawn's knuckles. She just told her everything she had found the previous day. Well, everything except the artefacts. If Dawn had turned to self-harm - Claudia really hoped that it was a one-off occurrence, because she didn't have the faintest idea how to deal with it if it wasn't - then Dawn really, really didn't need another load of crazy on her plate.

Claudia did realise, though, that it might simply be impossible to get to Univille in a day or so. Dawn hadn't really been out amongst people for any length of time since she had left the institution. Just a few half-hour drives to Caltech and back. Claudia had been the one to go out on food runs. Claudia didn't know how Dawn had managed before meeting up with Claudia.

If Dawn had a downswing because of a sudden exposure to people (in cars, admittedly) for a prolonged time, it could be very bad. And, in a car, there wasn't anywhere Dawn could cordon herself off from everyone in case someone turned out to be the Abomination.

Claudia brought this up as gently as she could. She suggested that it might be better if Dawn stayed here for a couple of days - she would have to bring Arthur back here anyway, as Joshua's equipment was still at Caltech.

But Dawn dismissed Claudia's points, although she admitted inwardly that they were probably valid. The fear of (possibly) being amongst the Abomination for several days was far outweighed by her fear of being alone for that time. After all, if she was Claudia's hallucination, maybe if Claudia was far away enough, then Dawn would cease to exist.

She was going with Claudia, and that was final.

~*~

In the end, it took a day and a half to get to Univille. They might have done it faster, but Claudia, not Dawn, got rather agitated at the thought that, if this worked, her brother would be back.

The fact that they would also have broken into a top secret warehouse full of madcap was just a secondary issue.


	10. Chapter 10

Claudia had been arrested, once. Although that might be a slight exaggeration.

It had happened after the second or third time that Josh had appeared to her. In order to deal with the debilitating headaches that Josh always caused, Claudia had gone to buy some painkillers. However, she was still in something of a fugue state and she had walked off with them without paying.

A cop had caught and handcuffed her. He hadn't needed to, but he had been young and probably new to the force. Still, it had been pretty easy for Claudia to slip away, and she had kept the handcuffs. They'd come in useful, even before the refinements she had made to them.

Dawn and Claudia had ditched the stolen car in Univille and walked the rest of the way to the Warehouse. There, Claudia was going to go into the Warehouse alone, and Dawn was going to wait in the car that they had found there, which would act as their getaway vehicle. Claudia hadn't told Dawn about what was (what might have been) in the Warehouse.

Dawn hadn't asked. She saw this as Claudia's quest. Dawn had helped to develop the formula for teleportation as far as she could, and now they needed outside help. As far as Dawn was concerned, she was here for moral support. And once Josh was back (she didn't doubt for a second that that was the only possible outcome) Claudia wouldn't need her for that, anymore.

So Dawn would go back to the psych ward. She felt that she owed that to her family. Well, to Joyce and Buffy. As for Hank, Dawn owed that _malus nequamque_ absolutely nothing. But, although Dawn had been doing fairly well for the last few days, she knew that it was only a matter of time before she had a downswing again. She knew that she needed to be treated and hopefully cured (at least partially) of her schizophrenia so that she could function in her everyday life.

Which meant that she would have to leave Claudia. Dawn hadn't broached this with her friend. Neither of them had talked about what they would do after they'd brought Josh back. But Dawn suspected that Claudia knew anyway.

Unfortunately, although Dawn was resolved to leave Claudia and head back to the psych ward, she didn't know if she could actually go through with that.

~*~

Claudia was terrified as she walked into the Warehouse. What if there were other people there? What if Arthur wasn't alone, or he stopped her from handcuffing her somehow? What would she do? Why couldn't Dawn have come in with her?

To help calm her down, Claudia focused on her fingers, pushing her thumb against each of them in turn. Little, ring, middle, index. Little, ring, middle, index. Over and over again. The almost meditative action normally calmed Claudia, but right then it did precisely nothing.

But, as Claudia walked into what was clearly a rather cluttered office of some sort, Claudia saw the Professor - Arthur - slumped at his desk, asleep. It was the work of moments to handcuff him, and fortunately he only woke up from his nap when she was done. Although Claudia was glad that there was no one around, she knew it was far too early to let her guard down.

Oddly, Artie didn't seem surprised to find that he was handcuffed. Claudia wondered if this was something that regularly happened to him. But then, if the Warehouse really was what its files said (might have said) it was, then there probably was no normal.

But Artie did seem surprised to see Claudia. He obviously didn't recognize her.

Claudia knew that she should have known that Artie wouldn't remember her. It had, after all, been more years than she liked to remember since Claudia had last met him, and she had grown up rather a lot since then. But, to Claudia's surprise, his lack of recognition made her angry, and swamped the last remnants of her fear.

"What, Professor?" Claudia spat in response to Artie's unasked question. "Don't you recognize me? I suppose it has been a few years, but still, I'm hurt, you know? After all, you did encourage my brother to try a _very_ dangerous experiment, didn't you?"

Claudia almost smiled when recognition dawned on Artie's face. "Claudia Donovan? _You're_ the breach?"

Claudia lifted her head proudly. "Knock knock."

Then she shocked him. Claudia knew she probably shouldn't, but the emotional turmoil clawing around her heart didn't permit her to do much else. In much the same way that Claudia felt the need to lash out and reveal her hack of the Warehouse with her (admittedly childish) "Knock knock" Claudia felt that she had to make Artie feel some share of what she had borne every day for years.

Claudia felt rather guiltily gratified when Artie yelped as the electric current of her modified handcuffs ran through his body. "Don't try to escape, _Professor_. You're coming with me."

Artie didn't protest that part. He knew that Myka and Pete wouldn't be back for hours yet, and with these (rather ingenious) handcuffs he didn't stand much chance of escaping. But he did ask "Why?"

Claudia found that she couldn't meet his gaze. As much as she believed - had to believe, because she _wasn't_ crazy, she just _wasn't_ - that Josh was alive somewhere, Claudia was fully aware of how crazy it sounded. "To bring Josh back."

If Claudia _had_ been looking at Artie at that moment, she would've seen pity and guilt flash across his face before he regained his composure. Given that Claudia would've taken kindly to neither emotion (although she would've been slightly gratified that Artie felt guilty, just as she did) it was probably for the best that she didn't see them. "He's dead, Claudia."

Claudia wanted to rail at him, to declare from the rooftops that he was, that he had to be. That Artie was wrong, and Claudia wasn't crazy. But she didn't.

Because of Dawn. Because Dawn had been upfront in telling her that she was crazy, and telling her exactly why she thought so. Because Claudia couldn't really trust that someone who doubted their own existence saw what she said she saw. Because, as much as Claudia hoped otherwise, the fact that one schizophrenic (possibly two) had seen Josh wasn't the best of proof.

It hurt Claudia to doubt Dawn. Dawn had stuck with Claudia, which no one else had ever done. Dawn had never let her down (brief abandonment in the psych ward notwithstanding) and yet Claudia was doubting her for no better reason than the fact that what they had both seen was crazy.

Which, as much as Claudia wished otherwise, was actually a good reason.

It felt as though Claudia was tearing out her own heart and stamping on it. She felt dizzy, and only sheer force of will and the fact that Artie was there prevented her from stumbling. Evidently, Claudia wasn't quite as stable as she had thought.

But then, as Claudia was so quick to remind herself, sanity and emotional stability weren't mutually inclusive.

But she had come too far to give up now. If Claudia found that she was in fact crazy, so be it. She really, really didn't want to deal with that, but it was a possibility. But she wasn't going to turn back, not without finding out. So, Claudia simply said in as calm a voice as she could manage "No. He isn't."

Artie didn't want to argue. In a career which was frequently filled with people being hurt and killed by artefacts, Artie had found long ago that if he felt guilty for every life he couldn't save, he'd never get out of bed in the morning. So he bottled everything up and kept everything away from everyone.

Nevertheless, Artie would have to admit, if only to himself, that he felt guilty over Joshua's death. That was one of the few occasions that Artie wished he could have stuck around and done more for Claudia. But the job hadn't allowed that.

Artie knew it was too late to help Joshua. But if he could help Claudia at all, even if only to help her get over her brother's death, he would. Even if it meant that she kidnapped him. Besides, he knew Pete and Myka would catch up to him soon enough.

So he went with Claudia. It wasn't as though he had a great deal of choice in the matter.

What Artie wasn't expecting was to see another girl, perhaps slightly older than Claudia, sitting in the front seat of the car. His car. He wondered exactly how Claudia had convinced someone to help her in her insane quest. Or perhaps the girl just didn't know what was going on.

"Who's she?" Artie said to Claudia as he was shoved unceremoniously into the back seat of his own car. Which was really rather galling.

Before Claudia had a chance to reply, Dawn said "Sol Invictus."

It was a lie. Artie knew it was a lie, mainly because he caught Claudia gawp momentarily at "Sol's" reply. Dawn smiled to herself - she hadn't planned on saying that before she actually had. It amused her.

"Okay... Sol." Claudia said, sliding in next to Dawn. "Let's go."

Then Claudia turned up the voltage on Artie's handcuffs and shocked him into unconsciousness. She didn't want to (didn't know how to) deal with Artie on a day-long car journey.

"Couldn't convince him with words, huh?" Dawn asked mildly. Claudia flushed. She knew that Dawn disliked the fact that they had had to steal cars and abduct the Professor, for all that she knew it was necessary.

"So, uh, why Sol Invictus?" Claudia asked, hoping to change the subject.

Dawn took the bait, much as Claudia had expected. Dawn rarely dwelled on one train of thought if there was a possibility of boarding another train. "I don't know, I wasn't planning on saying that. It just slipped out." Dawn said. Then she smiled again. "It's rather fitting, actually. Sol means sun in Latin."

Claudia nodded. "And you're Dawn. The dawning Sol."

Dawn contemplated telling Dawn how to actually say dawning sun in Latin, but she didn't bother. She also didn't bother to go into great detail on the few centuries when Sol Invictus had been a powerful god in the Roman Empire.

The reason that Dawn didn't reveal this was not because she thought that Claudia would be interested - she rather suspected that Claudia would welcome virtually anything to distract her from her upcoming task - but because that time period was one of the ones that Dawn knew intimately, far more than she should given the scanty research she had put into it. Latin was one of the languages that she hadn't so much learnt as remembered. It was part of the knowledge that made it impossible for her to entirely disregard the possibility that she was in fact the Key. And Dawn thought that the less she thought about things that she really shouldn't know, the better.

She also didn't mention to Claudia that "Invictus" meant invincible, or unconquerable. Dawn was absolutely certain that that was too presumptuous an epithet. She knew that, in regards to her, it was untrue. In every regard.


	11. Chapter 11

Author's note: until now, I have written Dawn as fairly stable. In this chapter, however, she has a schizophrenic episode. Just a warning.

~*~

"What exactly is it that you want me to do here?" Artie asked after Claudia dragged him into the lab.

"I told you." Claudia said "Bring back Joshua."

"He's dead, Claudia. I don't know how you manage to convince Sol to help you out, but he's dead." Artie said gently.

"He's not dead. Dead people don't come to visit." Claudia replied. "Look, we've got everything we need here - the formula, the same minerals that the compass was made out of-"

"But you don't actually have Rheticus' compass?" Artie asked.

"No. But we don't really need it if we have the minerals, right?" Claudia said.

"Look, you can't just replace an artefact. It has a - it's just irreplaceable, okay?"

"Artefact?" Dawn spoke up for the first time.

"Yeah, artefact. You do _know_ about artefacts, right?" Artie said. Then he saw, judging by Dawn's puzzled face, that she didn't. And, going by Claudia's stricken expression, this was because Claudia hadn't told her.

"What's he talking about, Claud?" Dawn asked.

"You haven't told her." Artie surmised.

"Told me what?"

Claudia didn't answer - she didn't know what to say. Before she could figure something out, Artie said "About artefacts. About what the Warehouse really is."

And then he told her everything. Because, if she was with Claudia, she needed to know what she was getting into.

Dawn seemed to take it quite well. Better than Claudia had, at any rate. Dawn turned to Claudia and asked "Why didn't you tell me?"

Claudia knew that there had to be a better answer than "To protect you from yourself.", something more palatable, but for the life of her she couldn't think what it might be.

Dawn seemed to know what Claudia didn't want to say anyway. Her hand tightened into a fist, nails biting deep into her palm and her scraped knuckles began to bleed gently again. _Calm, Dawn. She meant it for the best. In all fairness, I didn't ask what the Warehouse was._

But, no matter how Dawn tried to rationalize it, she couldn't help but feel as though Claudia had betrayed her. Had withheld information, just because she was unstable.

And then there was the fact that quasi-magical artefacts existed. Dawn didn't know how to deal with that. Vampires, sure. But artefacts? No.

That would make her one. The Key, a source of - well, she didn't know what, but it was an artefact. She was an artefact.

"Excuse me." Dawn said in a faraway voice. "I have to go."

Claudia lifted her hand as though to touch Dawn, and opened her mouth as though to apologize, but she didn't. She let Dawn leave.

~*~

Claudia had the keys to several rooms of this building, an outbuilding of the university devoted to scientific projects. After Joshua's death, it had never been repurposed, and the university had given Claudia the keys in case she ever wanted to visit the site of her brother's death.

But, because Claudia had been ushering Artie along, she had given Dawn the keys to the lab, and the adjacent rooms.

So Dawn opened one, went inside, locked it behind her and then went and sat under a table, wrapping her arms around her knees.

So, magic existed. Not magic spells, but magic objects. Had the monks used one to send her to the Slayer?

And what exactly did the Key do, that the Abomination wanted it so badly?

_Send the Key to the Slayer_. That hadn't worked out, hadn't kept her safe, oh physically Dawn was fine, but she was a wreck mentally.

The Abomination would find her. It was right outside the door. She could hear it breathing, stentorian, harsh and grating. Could see the shadow under the door.

No Dawn nothing there just an hallucination don't worry breathe Dawn

No. I can't breathe. It'll see me if I breathe. It's watching me, always watching.

Dawn there's nothing there you know that be calm it's all just imaginary

Dawn remembered an incident back in high school. _Here comes the Sun, it's been years since she's had friends._ They'd all teased her. Said she would only have a friend if it was imaginary. But the Abomination was neither imaginary nor friendly, it was right outside the door, she could see its shadow through the glass.

No it isn't you're seeing things just schizophrenic don't take any notice of what you see where's Claudia need help Buffy Claudia help

They'd always come to her for help, though. _Hey, Dawn, what's the answer? Thanks, loser._ That's all that Dawn had ever been, a brain to use and a body to tease. Even Claudia had used her, used her to help with the formula but not even told her about the Warehouse.

That's not true and you know it, she couldn't kno-

It didn't matter. The part of her that knew she was crazy didn't matter. Not with the Abomination outside, waiting, waiting for her to move _DON'T MOVE_ so that it could make its move and take her away.

There's nothi-

But then, what would it matter? She didn't exist, had never existed, was just the result of some monks that couldn't even put her together properly. Claudia knew that, had abandoned her in the car park _why does everyone anyone everyone always leave_ and was abandoning her now.

No Dawn that-

Buffy wasn't here. Had moved to Sunnydale. Hark at the Slayer, not protecting her. Had always been out for herself, tough, the popular kid, never had time for her antisocial sister. Didn't want to hang out with Dawn, preferred her own crowd, as sure as sin(26) = 0.762558450848.

There was light under the door now. Golden light. That was different. Not the Abomination's shadow. It was Claudia's brother. Dawn knew Claudia hadn't told her about his more frequent visits, because they were hurting her more and more. She had seen how ill Claudia was getting, how pale and sickly, she was going to die, and everyone will die but her because she remembers long ago and speaks their languages like a native. She is the Key and she shall not die.

Don't move. If she moved, the Abomination would find her. Dawn was running out of breath now, but better to pass out than be taken, to be taken and made to exist even less than she did now. Claudia hadn't told her about the artefacts because she had forgotten that Dawn existed. Because she didn't.

Dawn breathed. Suddenly, hands were everywhere, tugging at her clothes, pulling, pushing, yanking her hair _it's a nightmare I can't wake up it's real I live in a dream_Dawn didn't scream or else the Abomination would take her breath away, steal her voice. If she couldn't speak, she couldn't remind people that she was there and she would just fade away.

It's just a tactile hallucination Claudia needs you

Dawn needed Claudia, but she wasn't there. No one to protect her, all lost, the Key without a lock.

_J'ai une araignée au plafond, J'ai le cafard, tu es un cafard_ Dawn laughed shortly, had it startled out of her.

But the laugh went on and on and on, not from her lips, echoing in her ears, dozens of laughs, high, low, menacing, chuckles, giggles, guffaws, deafening _make it stop it isn't funny_ but it didn't it just kept going until Dawn felt like her head would burst.

Then there was a clang. Dawn was never sure if that was in her head or if it actually happened, but it signalled the end of the episode. She got up and banged her head on the table before she remembered where she was. She crawled out from under the table, straightened her clothes (_Did I mess them up or were there really hands?_) and her hair. She took several deep breaths before she left the room and returned to the lab.

There were two people there that Dawn didn't know. Dawn didn't care about them.

She cared about the fact that she returned just in time to watch Joshua reach out and touch the Professor's hand. She was just in time to see him and Claudia vanish.

_Too slow. I was too slow. Claudia needed me and I wasn't there._


	12. Chapter 12

"Who are you?" one of the other people - the man - said.

_Now we know that the machine works, so all we need to do is make an anchor to pull Claudia back rather than have her pull me through._ "Sol Invictus. Who're you?" Dawn replied, not really thinking about the others. _We? It'll just be I, now._

"Umm, no. Try again." the woman said.

"Wait, what? Myka, you can't just tell someone that their name isn't their name!" the man said.

"Pete, Sol Invictus was a Roman mythological figure." the woman - Myka - explained in the tone of voice which implied that she had to explain things a lot.

"So? Lots of people have mythological names. I knew I guy called Hercules in high school. Boy, did he get teased for that." Pete replied.

"Okay, let me rephrase. A male mythological figure." Myka said exasperated.

"Oh. Gotcha."

_What kind of teleportation requires someone being pushed out of this dimension, anyway? Wouldn't it be faster to just travel in a straight line?_ "Okay, my name's Dain Ironfoot."

"No."

"Joyce James." _I could probably rejig the formula to do that - cut out all that drivel about the artefact, rearrange a few things... well, I could if these people ever left me alone._

"No. Try again."

"Okay, I get why Ironfoot was made up, no one's called that. But what's wrong with Joyce James?" Pete asked, seemingly lost.

"Dain Ironfoot was a Dwarf in The Hobbit, and James Joyce was an author." Myka explained.

"Actually, Joyce James is my mother's name. Or was her name, before she got married." Dawn replied. _Well, I suppose they have their uses, otherwise sooner or later it'll sink in that I might not see Claudia again, and that would be bad. They can distract me at least._

"So, what's your real name?" Myka said.

"Dawn Donovan."

Pete blinked. "No way are you related to Claudia."

"Yup. She's my sister." Dawn said. _Oh, Claudia's going to kick me when she finds out I said that._

"But you look completely different." Pete said.

"Yeah, and you weren't in her file. Try again." Myka said. She knew - hoped - that Artie would find the secret instructions that she knew - hoped - Rheticus had put on the compass soon, but right now she didn't know whether this girl knew anything or not about what was going on here. And Myka disliked not having all the facts.

"Okay, okay. I'm Dawn Summers. Friend of Claudia's. I tried to solve the teleportation formula with her before she got stuck and abducted the Professor." Dawn explained. She didn't explain that she was schizophrenic, because she wasn't really the sharing type. Dawn had only told Claudia about it because it was inevitable that she would find out at some point anyway.

Then there was light, and the amount of people in the room suddenly doubled.

Dawn didn't say anything, or even move when Claudia reappeared with her brother and Artie. Not because she was having a panic attack or anything like that.

But because Claudia had her brother back. Everything that Claudia had set out to do had now been accomplished. Which meant that she didn't need Dawn around anymore.

Dawn didn't know how she felt about that. On the one hand, Claudia was her friend. And, if she was honest about it, just about the only friend that she had actually ever made. Dawn had never been interested in other people, and had preferred to stick close to Buffy. It was probably a schizo thing. So, now that Claudia had her life back, Dawn didn't want to cut ties with her completely, but she doubted that Claudia would want a permanent reminder of the months she had spent thinking that she was crazy.

On the other hand, now that Claudia had her life back, Dawn could start fixing hers. Away from artefacts, and teleportation, and sticking to just good old fashioned vampires. She could check back into the psych ward and get herself sane, get back to university.

Dawn didn't know what she wanted. She didn't want a life where every few days she had to lock herself in her room out of fear that the Abomination would get her. She didn't want to deal with artefacts every day - or even deal with them at all, not while she wasn't quite sure if she was one or not.

But then, she didn't want to go back to her dull life of easy classes and absolutely no social activity other than Buffy dragging her out shopping. As much as being with Claudia and finding out about the Warehouse had made her question her own reality all the more, it had been exciting and challenging.

Dawn didn't know what to do, and the choice paralysed her.

She overheard Artie tell Pete and Myka about the instructions hidden on the compass, and Claudia excitedly tell Joshua how she had found him (and glossing over her experience in the psych ward) and touching him as often as possible as though to make sure he was really there (Dawn knew what that was like). Joshua, for his part, seemed rather shell-shocked. Dawn suspected that going years without speaking to a single soul and then being subjected to a babbling sister could do that to a person.

Eventually, though, Claudia seemed to realise that there were people in the room that she wasn't related to. She murmured a couple of words to Joshua (which Dawn didn't catch, because Pete was loudly exclaiming about someone called Mrs Frederic) and moved over to Dawn.

"How are you doing?" Claudia offered.

Dawn certainly _intended_ to say something meaningful in response, but all that she actually managed was "Hmmmm?"

"Do you forgive me?" Claudia asked in a small voice, entirely at odds with the rather boisterous persona that she had so recently demonstrated.

"What for?" Dawn said, not paying a great deal of attention. In order to take her mind off of the upcoming decision, Dawn was mentally excising all the parts of the formula pertaining to the compass, in order to come up with an artefact free teleportation machine. Of course, it would take more work than that, and it would be only one way, but Dawn was confident she could work it out.

"For not telling you about the artefacts, and the Warehouse."

"Oh, yes. I quite understand."

"So... do you want to meet him?"

"Meet who?"

Claudia glanced sidelong at her friend. "Dawn, I'm the one who just got zapped into a pocket dimension and back. If anyone's going to be spaced out, it'll be me."

"Sorry." _I'm just trying not to think about anything important._

"I meant Joshua, by the way."

"Oh. Okay."

Now that Joshua was no longer surrounded by golden light, Dawn could see that he was about Claudia's age, perhaps a little older. So much for his big brother status.

Dawn rather awkwardly extended a hand and said stiffly "Hi. I'm Dawn. I helped Claudia bring you back."

Joshua cracked a smile - the first that wasn't an ear-to-ear grin at being back on Earth - and said "Did that help entail being dragged through a hedge backwards?"

"No." Dawn said faintly, letting her hand fall limp as Joshua shook it. _Just having a schizophrenic episode under a table next door._

"Sorry. Maybe being dragged through a hedge backwards is _the_ look these days. I don't know, I can't get used to the fact that my kid sister's my age now." Joshua said apologetically.

"You can let go of my hand now."

"Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to take it hostage. It's just been a really long time since I've touched anything that wasn't me." Joshua said, dropping Dawn's hand and blushing.

"Quite understandable." Dawn said absently. Then what Joshua had said penetrated the fog of numbers that Dawn was filling her thoughts with. "Oh. _Oh._" Dawn blushed too.

"I didn't mean it like that..." Joshua muttered under his breath.

Claudia chortled wickedly "Don't worry, Dawn, Josh didn't have much social skills even before."

Dawn shrugged uncomfortably. "Social skills are over rated."

Fortunately, before something else happened that led to Dawn blushing so much that she caught fire, it seemed as though Artie, Myka and Pete had finally caught each other up.

"So, we're going back to the Warehouse." Artie said authoritatively. "You three are going to come with us."

"Warehouse?" Joshua asked, baffled, at the same time as his sister said "Why?"

Dawn, however, didn't say a word. It gave her more time to come to a decision - or, as the case may be, avoid making one.

"I'll explain on the way." Artie said to Joshua gruffly. "As for you, young lady, you have to show me how you hacked the Warehouse."

Before Dawn could stop herself, she blurted "What about me?"

"You know about the Warehouse. We have to figure out what to do about that."

Pete echoed Dawn's thoughts. "Well, that sounds ominous."


	13. Chapter 13

The first thing that Artie did upon returning to Univille (after dropping off the others at Leena's and informing them that they were, under no circumstances, to leave the building or try to contact anyone, and leaving Pete and Myka to ensure that they obeyed) was head over to the Warehouse to research Dawn Summers.

Myka had told him about Claudia's stay at the psych ward, but he didn't know about Dawn. He didn't know where she fit into things, or what should be done about her. Admittedly, he didn't really know what to do about Claudia either, but at least she was a more or less known quantity.

It didn't take long to find that Dawn Summers had also had a spell in the psych ward, and she had been diagnosed as schizophrenic. According to her files (which took some hacking to access) she had recurring dreams that she was a ball of energy that had been changed into human forms by monks, and hallucinations that some mysterious figure Dawn called the Abomination was after her in some fashion.

And had Dawn not stumbled across the Warehouse, Artie would have thought nothing of that, other than the fact that Dawn was crazy. However, in Artie's experience, everything artefact related sooner or later came to the attention of the Warehouse agents.

A small part of Artie hoped that Dawn's schizophrenia had been caused by an artefact, because if it had then he could reverse it. Because no one should have to suffer their own mind betraying them. But Artie quashed that, because he couldn't afford to pity the girl. Because if he became emotionally invested in Dawn, and he couldn't save her, he'd spiral and feel guilty. Artie had been down that road before, and it didn't end well. It was best to maintain a clinical disinterest at all times.

But still, it would be a good idea if Artie researched some more into these monks, and this Key which Dawn seemed to believe that she was. But Artie didn't have the time to do that right now, because-

"Hello, Arthur."

-Mrs Frederic was almost certain to drop in to find out what Arthur was planning on doing with Dawn and the Donovans.

"Hello, Mrs Frederic." Artie turned to face the woman. "Someday, you'll have to tell me how you do that."

Mrs Frederic smiled mysteriously. "Magic."

Artie snorted. "There's no such thing."

"You have Merlin's staff in the Arthurian aisle."

"Artefacts don't count."

Mrs Frederic raised an eyebrow, as though to say "Whatever you say, Artie."

"Look, if you don't want to tell, that's fine." Artie huffed.

"I came to ask you about your plans for the girls." Mrs Frederic announced.

"The girls? You're not worried about Joshua?" Artie frowned.

"No. He has spent years trapped between dimensions. After he has become accustomed to this time period, he will be entirely dependent on us to get his life back. Besides, he hasn't hacked into the Warehouse nor abducted an agent." Mrs Frederic replied.

Good point. Artie believed that they could rely upon Joshua not to tell anyone about the Warehouse. Claudia and Dawn, on the other hand, didn't have such a good track record.

Of course, with their history of mental ill health, it was unlikely that anyone would believe word they said, but even if the majority of the world treated the pair like the Cassandra of Greek mythology, some unsavoury characters would take interest eventually.

On the other hand, there were plenty of artefacts that would ensure that neither of them remembered the Warehouse, let alone talked about it, but Artie would prefer not to have to resort to those.

"Claudia did what she did to get her brother back. I really can't blame her for that. And I think Dawn was just helping a friend."

"Do you really believe that the Warehouse is the best place for someone with schizophrenia to spend their time?" Mrs Frederic asked acidly.

"How do you know about that? I only just found out about that! And I realise as I say this that there is absolutely no chance of you telling me how you know, is there?"

Mrs Frederic didn't reply.

"I will not separate Dawn from her friend and ship her back to that psychiatric hospital in LA. Not until we've ruled out any possibly of an artefact causing her schizophrenia."

"Do you think there is?"

"There might be." Artie hedged. He didn't add _I hope there is_.

"Very well. You shall have time to consider your options."

"Thank you."

"Just not all the time in the world."

~*~

Leena could see people's auras. And artefacts, too. This had gotten her into trouble as child, before she figured out that not everyone could see them and she really shouldn't mention that she could. Then there had been the phase in her teens when her gift had truly blossomed, which led to her being able to switch her ability on and off so that she wasn't blinded by large groups of people.

Most people's auras were predominantly one colour, two at the most, but with lots of other, lesser hues indicating their current thought and feelings. In some cases, but by no means all, this gave Leena a glimpse into what the person in question was like. Most of the time, though, it didn't.

So when Pete and Myka brought in three new people to stay at the B&B, Leena switched on her gift and examined the newcomers' auras.

Joshua's was mainly brown and beige, indicating a stable nature. Leena doubted that he would have any problems adjusting to returning to Earth after having been gone for twelve years.

Claudia's was red, and Leena would normally take this to mean that Claudia had a passionate, exuberant nature, but there were a number of other colours threaded through it which Leena couldn't even begin to guess the meaning of.

Dawn's was exclusively green, but of every imaginable shade. What was more, whereas a person aura normally extended only six inches or so from a person's body and shaped itself so it looked like a second skin, Dawn's was ragged and chaotic, in constant motion.

Leena had seen auras like that before, when an artefact had been placed near another artefact that it didn't get along with. Or when a dangerous artefact was acting directly on someone in a negative way. But, as neither of those applied in Dawn's case, Leena hadn't the faintest idea what it signified.

She decided that she would tell Artie about it later.

~*~

Dawn had slept during the majority of the ride back to Univille. Three 20-hour car journeys in about three days really took it out of her. It helped that Dawn more or less forced herself to sleep, so that she didn't have to think. About anything.

However, at some point, Dawn had to wake up. Reality came crashing in. Or something like it.

Still, Dawn didn't want to deal with that right now, and she was pretty sure that she could bury her head in that sand just a little while longer.

So Dawn sat back on the sofa and watched Claudia trying (and failing) to catch Joshua up on the events of the last decade, and Joshua eating cookies so fast that Dawn was surprised that there wasn't a sonic boom.

Dawn most emphatically neither watched nor eavesdropped on Pete and Myka, because Dawn already had a persecution complex and it really wouldn't help to know that a pair of agents guarding a warehouse full of crazy were talking about her. Neither did Dawn pay any mind to the proprietor of the B&B, who kept shooting her bemused glances.

Eventually, when Joshua made it clear that he wanted to be left alone with his food - after all, he hadn't eaten for twelve years - Claudia made her way over to Dawn.

"So, while you were asleep, Myka said that you told her that you were my sister."

"I also told her I was a dwarf from The Hobbit." Dawn replied.

"Yeah, but the main thing is, you told her you were my sister." Claudia said, smirking.

"Why exactly is that the main thing?"

"What I'm trying to say is, why did you say that you were my sister?" Claudia said exasperatedly.

"Because they wanted me to tell them what was going on, and you'd just disappeared in a flash of light and I'd just wigged out under a table next door. I thought if I said anything actually important, I'd probably start crying." Dawn admitted dryly, not looking at Claudia.

Claudia didn't say anything for several minutes. Eventually, she managed to say "Oh." and hated herself for being so inarticulate.

"So, hey, your brother's back!" Dawn said, changing the subject.

"Yeah."

"And he seems to be trying to eat twelve years' worth of food into one night."

"Yeah."

"You know, Claud, you don't seem wildly happy about that." Dawn noted. Now that Claudia was no longer babbling excitedly to her brother, she seemed gloomy, which wasn't like Claudia. It was normally Dawn that was gloomy - although, she had to admit that she had better cause for it than Claudia did.

"What? Oh, no, it's great that he's back. It's just..." Claudia trailed off.

Dawn waited several moments for her friend to continue before she said "Claud, while monks may have seen fit to turn me into a human calculator, they didn't make me a mind reader. You still have to finish sentences if you want me to know what's wrong."

"It's just that I've spent the last year or so trying to bring him back. It was pretty much all I thought about. And now he is, and I - I don't know what to do now." Claudia said, voice getting steadily quieter as she made her way through the sentence.

Dawn felt certain that she should be able to say something more profound than "Ah." but her brain simply froze. It shouldn't have, she knew - after all, Claudia's predicament almost perfectly mirrored her own - but Dawn was simply no good at comforting. And this time she couldn't come up with some random drivel about solipsism and self-doubt and hope that would do the trick, because Dawn just simply didn't know what to do. She didn't know what to do herself, so she couldn't advise Claudia what to do, no matter how much she might want to.

She couldn't even bring herself to hug Claudia. She'd done that on impulse, back in the psych hospital, and it had been completely against her nature then. And now that Claudia's own brother was just across the room, hugging her would just be inappropriate.

Claudia sniffed, then stood up. "Anyway, I'm going to turn in for the night. It's been a long day."

"What?" said Dawn, thinking. "Oh. Okay, see you in morning."

~*~

Although Claudia had been expecting to be twisting and turning all night, she actually fell asleep rather quickly. It _had_ been a long day.

She came half-awake a few hours later when she heard someone moving outside, but in her sleepy state Claudia assumed that it had been her brother checking in on her, and she drifted back to sleep feeling safe and happy.


	14. Chapter 14

"So, I have something to tell you." Artie announced.

"Yeah, I gathered that. That's why you gathered us here whilst civilized people should be in their beds." Pete grumbled.

Artie ignored him entirely. "As I was saying-"

"I mean, Myka and I flew down to LA, we could've flown back, but no, you insisted that we had to drive your precious car back here, so we had to rent another car to fit us all in anyway, and long car journeys are just so boring." Pete continued.

Leena touched his arm gently "Pete, that's enough, don't you think?"

Pete subsided sulkily.

"What did you want to tell us?" Myka asked.

"I was getting to that. In fact, I would already have told you, had someone not interrupted." Artie grumbled. "It's about Dawn."

"Hobbit Girl? What about her?"

"She's schizophrenic." Artie said, glaring sternly at Pete.

Pete, of course, took no notice. "Hey _hey_ hey! You mean when Myka asked who she was and she gave all those names, she was actually being serious?"

"Pete, schizophrenia isn't the same as having multiple personalities." Leena said.

"It isn't?"

"No, that's a common misconception. Although it would explain a few things." Leena mused.

"Like what?" Artie queried.

"Her aura is - very strange. The only time I've ever seen anything like that is when an artefact is affecting someone. I wonder if all crazy people have auras like that?" Leena replied. "I've never really looked before."

"Dawn stayed at the same psychiatric hospital as Claudia. It's how the pair met. I was able to access Dawn's files-" Artie handed out printed copies of Dawn's records "-and you might interested in what they say."

"Artie, it's _way_ too early in the morning to be reading things. Can't you just tell us what it says?" Pete complained.

"We shouldn't be reading this, Artie. It's private, it's not any of our business." Myka said.

"She broke into the Warehouse, which makes it our business." Artie replied.

Meanwhile, Leena had been quietly skimming through the file. "You think an artefact is behind it, don't you?"

"Do I really have to read the file, or can you just tell me what it says?" Pete asked.

Artie told him.

"Well, normally, I'd say she's nuts, but given that she shared an asylum with Claudia and Claudia's not nuts, it seems artefact-y to me." Pete declared.

"I wish you hadn't told us this." Myka said.

"Are you kidding me? You _always_ want me to tell you more than you need to know." Artie said.

"Yeah, but this is private. And now we'll just be walking on egg shells around her, and it'll be really weird. It should've been Dawn's choice to tell us." Myka replied.

"Myka, Dawn broke into the Warehouse."

"Yeah, I know, but-"

"I'm with Artie on this one, Mykes." Pete said. "This is something that Artie can't not tell us." he frowned. "Does that make sense?"

Artie shrugged. "I don't know, I rarely trouble to follow your train of thought. But I get what you're trying to say. We need to know about this so that we can figure out what to do with her."

Myka gave up, although she still felt uncomfortable about the whole thing. So, to a lesser extent, did Leena.

~*~

Claudia woke early the following morning, which wasn't an unusual occurrence. She tended not to sleep much, given that every hour she slept was an hour that Joshua was still trapped.

However, now that Joshua was no longer trapped, Claudia could lounge in bed as long as she liked. It was the normal teenage thing to do.

Claudia got bored after three minutes, got dressed and left her room.

She got as far as opening her door before she jumped back inside again.

Okay, Claudia was fairly experienced at seeing unusual things. This however, was a (marginally) less outrageous unusual thing than the kind of things she usually saw, which paradoxically made it more unusual.

So Claudia poked her head around the door to see if she had in fact seen what she thought she had seen.

She had.

Dawn was asleep in a chair just next to the door - and she had a ferret asleep on her lap.

Claudia wasn't too bothered by the ferret. With a Warehouse full of madcap in town, ferrets were hardly strange. Dawn camping outside her room, however, was strange.

Claudia gently poked Dawn in the shoulder, planning to ask her what she was doing there. However, rather than waking Dawn, it somehow woke the ferret instead, who got up and resettled itself, accidentally swiping its tail across Dawn's face. That woke her up.

"What's going on?" Dawn asked blearily, wiping her nose vigorously.

"You're asleep outside my room." Claudia replied. "Well, now you're awake outside my room, actually, and you seem to have a ferret."

"Oh, the ferret's real? Good to know." Dawn murmured.

Claudia didn't realise what Dawn had said until too late - she just asked "Why aren't you in your room?" before she processed it.

"Well, see, if someone's in my room then they'd have to be looking for me, and the only person looking for me would be the Abomination. But if I was in the hallway, then someone in the hallway could just be using the hallway." Dawn explained. "It seemed a lot more logical when I was crazy."

"Rough night, huh?" Claudia gave Dawn's shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

"It wasn't so bad." Dawn said, trying valiantly to convince Claudia not to worry about her.

"I understand that the answer to this question may make no sense to me, but - why did you pick the hallway outside _my_ bedroom?"

Dawn rubbed her chin as she tried to remember. The night was rather hazy - well, actually it wasn't, but the part where Dawn hadn't been thinking coherently was still so fresh in her mind that that part where she hadn't been crazy was difficult to remember. "Because I knew you'd come out of it at some point, and I wanted to talk to you about what you said last night."

Claudia froze. "Dawn-"

Dawn ploughed on regardless. "Claud, as I see it there are two options. One, you do some hacking thing to get you and your brother a less colourful history and come back to LA. Josh could go back to Caltech, and you could enrol too, or maybe go to UCLA if you want. And I could go back too, and maybe see Greene sometimes between university classes, 'cause, hey, I'm a functioning schizo. Mostly.

Or we could stay here and do artefact-y things, I don't really know about that. You'd probably have to talk to Artie."

"Wow, you really put a lot of thought into that." Claudia said, just for something to say.

"Well, I couldn't think of anything to say last night when you actually needed me to say something, so, yeah, I kind of spent most of the night wondering about it." Dawn said.

"What do you want to do?" Claudia asked. She had already narrowed her future down to those two possibilities (well, not the enrolling in university one, but something similar) but the problem was that she didn't know what she wanted to do.

"Me? I don't think I should be the one to make big life decisions, Claud."

"Don't say things like that."

"It's okay if _I_ say things like that."

"And you're not going go back to the psych hospital?"

"I thought about it, but seeing as how you're sane and we barely get visitors there, it probably wouldn't be the best option."

"You're really keen on sticking with me, aren't you?" Claudia noted.

"Yes. Unless you don't want me to?" Dawn said, steadfastly not looking at Claudia.

"What? God, no. Stick to me like glue, by all means."

"You don't have to say that, if you don't want to. I mean, you've got your brother back, and you might not want to be saddled with a crazy person." Dawn said wretchedly.

"Don't say things like that. Dawn, of course I want you around. Last time you left me, I tried to kill myself."

"I thought we agreed not to talk about that."

"Well, don't be so stupid then. Dawn, if I didn't want you around, I would say so, okay?"

"But how do I know you're not just saying that because you're nice?"

"Because we agreed to deal with all the outrageous stuff together, and having an older brother who's now the same age as me and living in same town as Outrageous Central definitely counts as outrageous."

Dawn smiled. "So you just want me around because I'm useful."

"No, I want you around because I like having you around. But seeing as how you don't seem to be able to accept that, sure, you can stick around because you're useful."

"Gee, thanks."

~*~

"Knock knock."

Artie jumped about a foot in the air (no mean feat from a sitting position) and scattered paper everywhere. "Don't do that, Claudia!"

Claudia snickered. "Aw, why not? Did I scare you?"

Artie chose not to answer that. "How did you get in here, anyway?"

Claudia struck a ridiculous pose. "No door can keep a Donovan out! Just call me Doornovan."

"I most certainly will not."

"Yeah, you're right. Not my best nickname." Claudia admitted. "So, when do I get to see the rest of the Warehouse?"

"You don't." Artie said flatly.

"Pretty please?"

"No."

"Ah well. I was actually here about something else." Claudia said, sitting on the edge of Artie's desk, and pointedly ignoring his glare.

"What?" Artie asked guardedly.

"I'm guessing that you've found out about Dawn by now."

Artie didn't see the point in denying it, so he nodded.

"And you've told the others?"

Artie nodded again.

"Don't ship her back to the psych hospital. Don't treat her like she's made of glass, either. Don't pity her, she's a person."

"I have no intention of doing any of those things." Artie replied.

"Because if you do - wait, what did you say?"

"I have no intention of doing any of those things." Artie repeated. "Were you going to threaten me?"

"I was going to make an appeal to the kind hearted professor who held a girl's hand when she was scared twelve years ago, actually." Claudia admitted.

Artie looked at Claudia consideringly. "There's something I should tell you about her schizophrenia..."


	15. Chapter 15

For the following week, both Dawn and Joshua spent the majority of their time in their rooms.

Joshua did so because Leena had found him a laptop, and he was rather haphazardly catching up with the events of the last twelve years. This was hampered by Claudia's efforts to drag Joshua out into the world and do something with himself - as yet, Claudia hasn't figured out exactly what that might be. However, Joshua was unwilling to do anything of that sort just yet. After all, acclimating to society after twelve years of isolation was difficult.

On the other hand, Dawn didn't leave her room because there were people outside it. Dawn had no problem with the Donovans, because even after Claudia told her brother about her schizophrenia, neither of them treated her any differently. Similarly, Artie treated Dawn more or less the same way he treated Claudia - as a nuisance.

However, both Pete and Myka were noticeably wary around Dawn, and so Dawn didn't want to be around them. It just made her (and them) uncomfortable. Leena tried to treat Dawn in the same way she treated everyone else, but Dawn still caught the glances that Leena gave her. Dawn could do without those.

So, one day Claudia went to open Dawn's room, only to find that it was locked. This wasn't a particularly unusual occurrence, as Dawn was still working on teleportation_sans_ compass. Claudia called through the door "I'll be back later!" and left.

Claudia returned a few hours later, but the door was still locked. At that point, Claudia started to get worried. "Dawn? Are you okay?"

There was no response. A wordless, unnamed dread spread through Claudia's gut. Despite herself, Claudia found herself remembering Dawn hitting the wall until her hand bled. Although, since then, Dawn had shown no signs of wanting to self-harm, Claudia nevertheless became agitated. She went to find Leena.

"Hey, Leena! Do you have a spare key to Dawn's room?"

"Why do you want it?"

Claudia quickly explained the situation, and Leena wordlessly handed over the key. Claudia rushed back upstairs to try it - and it didn't work. Oh, the key turned and the lock opened, but no matter how hard Claudia pushed the door simply wouldn't open.

Which meant that Dawn had barricaded the door somehow, and, given that Dawn had still made no sound, Claudia couldn't help but think that Dawn had... done something that Claudia couldn't even contemplate.

Claudia raced back downstairs. If she kept moving and if she got to Dawn as fast as possible, then everything would be okay. It had to be.

"Leena do you have a ladder?" Claudia asked, words tumbling out and slurring together in her haste.

"Why?"

Again, and with mounting impatience, Claudia rapidly explained the situation.

"I don't have a ladder, no. I've got something better." Leena said, then went and retrieved a trampoline.

Claudia looked at it dubiously. "Leena, that's a trampoline."

"It's an artefact. It belonged to-"

"Look, can you just skip the history and tell me what it does?"

"It allows you to jump high and then come down very slowly. I use it for washing windows. It'll let you look in through Dawn's window to see if she is okay."

By this time, Pete, Myka and Joshua had appeared to find out what was going on. When they found out, Pete put a hand on Claudia's shoulder and said "Look, Claud, are you sure you want to go up there?"

Claudia shrugged him off violently. "Of course I do!"

"What I mean to say is, when someone barricades themselves into their room like that, it's normally not for a good reason." Pete said gently.

Claudia sagged. "I know that. But if there's a chance that I can do anything..."

"Claudia, there are some things that people just shouldn't see. Look, I'll go up there. There's nothing you can do that I can't, and it'll save you from having to see something you shouldn't have to. Okay?"

Claudia suddenly had a lump in her throat, so she just nodded. If Dawn had ... done what Claudia thought that Dawn might've done, then Claudia didn't know how she would deal with seeing it.

Pete made to jump on the trampoline, but Myka stopped him. "Pete, let me do it."

Pete frowned. "You sure, Mykes? Even if Dawn hasn't committed suicide" Claudia clamped her hand over her ears "you're still not the best person to deal with emotional turmoil."

This was probably true. Pete was sometimes scarily intuitive and surprisingly emotionally intelligent, even though he usually acted as though he was about ten, whereas Myka was - well, not.

On the other hand, there was Sam. Sam Martino, who Myka had loved, and who's death she still blamed herself for. After having lived through that, Myka could safely say that she knew a bit about emotional turmoil.

"Let me do it."

Pete threw up his hands. "Alright. Bounce away."

Feeling somewhat foolish as she did so, Myka got onto the little trampoline and bounced.

Thank goodness that Myka wasn't scared of heights, because essentially standing on air was an extremely freaky sensation. Still, Myka ignored that and peered through the window.

Dawn was lying on her back on the floor, and she wasn't moving.

Damn.

Myka wrapped her jacket around her leg and maneuvered herself (she never quite figured out how) so that she could kick through the window and laboriously climbed through.

Leena could yell at her about that later.

Myka crouched down next to Dawn and felt for a pulse. There was one, strong, but rapid and unsteady. She was clearly breathing too, but shallow, quick breaths.

Myka didn't know what was wrong with Dawn, so, not knowing what to do, she settled for saying "Hello Dawn."

"Good morning." came the response, less than a fraction of a second after Myka spoke. Myka blinked and rocked back on her heels in surprise.

For lack of anything better to say, Myka said "How are you doing?"

Again, the response came almost before the words left Myka's mouth "Well, I'm talking to myself, and they say that the first sign of madness. But I've got so many other signs of madness that one more doesn't count." Dawn said in a calm, steady voice that certainly didn't match her breathing.

"Uh, Dawn? It's me, Myka. I'm actually here." Myka said warily.

"Nope. Barricaded the door. Don't want people today."

"I came in through the window."

For the first time, Dawn didn't speak instantly. Instead her eyes slammed open, and she slowly sat up to look at the window. "_Cagar_." Dawn said. Myka didn't recognize the language, but she knew a swear word when she heard one.

Then she turned to Myka, blue eyes wide. "You've got to get out. Get out now!"

"Dawn, I'm not going anywhere-"

Dawn clutched her head. "You don't understand! You left the window open! Now it can get in, and I'm leaking out..."

Myka realised that she may not want to hear the answer, but nevertheless she asked "What can get in?"

In a quiet, dull voice that sent shivers down Myka's spine, Dawn said "The Abomination."

Myka quickly realised that she was well out of her depth here. But there was nothing for it but to plunge on bravely. "Dawn, there's no one here but you and me."

"You mean just you. I'm not here, just a ball of energy that thinks it is human, that's me." Dawn said, winding her hands through her hair in such a way that had to be really painful and screwing her eyes up tightly.

Myka came to the conclusion that nothing she could say would snap Dawn out of this.

But then, actions spoke louder than words.

Gently, Myka untangled Dawn's hands, unfurling them from the tightly clenched fists that they repeatedly tried to make.

Then she took one hand, and put it over Dawn's heart, and put the other over her own.

"See, Dawn?" Myka said softly, barely more than a whisper. "Can you feel your heart? It's just like mine. Can you feel it beating?"

Myka wasn't sure if it was a reply or just an exhalation, but she thought that she heard Dawn breathe "Yes."

"Good. Just focus on that." Myka said.

Myka remembered all the long, sleepless nights following Sam's death when she had done just this. Focused on the signs of life. Because if she didn't, she would have had to focus on other things, and focusing on those things, the things related not to life but to death, then Myka would have nothing to hold onto.

And what Myka had needed, more than anything, was something to hold onto.

Myka didn't know how long she say like that. After a while, she forgot that Dawn was even there. She was remembering Sam. Not the immediate aftermath, not dead Sam, but living, laughing, loving Sam.

It hurt, of course, to remember that. But it was a good pain.

Eventually, Dawn opened her eyes.

"How are you doing?" Myka said. Her voice cracked on the first attempt, and she had to try again. She released Dawn's hand to wipe her eyes with a sleeve.

"'m okay." Dawn croaked.

"Feeling up to getting out of here?"

Dawn, who didn't feel capable of more speech just yet, simply nodded.

Together, the pair shifted the wardrobe that Dawn had moved in front of the door and went downstairs.

As soon as Claudia saw Dawn walk into the room, Claudia stood up. This was odd, because Claudia felt as though her legs couldn't possibly support her and she would much rather sit down before she collapsed. It was almost as though she was drawn upright like a marionette.

Nevertheless, Claudia walked on shaky legs until she stopped just in front of Dawn. At which point she slapped her friend.

"Don't you _ever_ scare me like that again." Claudia said coldly.

Dawn raised a hand to touch the red handprint now emblazoned on the side of her face. "I won't." she said, knowing that she wouldn't be able to keep that promise. And knowing that Claudia knew that too.

Then Claudia wrapped her friend in her arms as though she was never going to let go, and Dawn reacted in much the same way, and both of them pretended not to know that the other person was crying.


	16. Chapter 16

Author's note: I think I've rather extensively shown Dawn during her low points. Now it's time to show her higher points.

~*~

Dawn was better, after that. She left her room. She talked to people - not about anything important. She just chatted, really. She'd missed that.

Myka came to the conclusion that Dawn wasn't really all that different from how she had been after Sam's death. There had been times, then, where she simply hadn't been able to deal with people and had locked herself in her room and bawled her eyes out. Times when living had simply seemed too hard, and becoming a grief-stricken crazy person had seemed like an attractive option. The only difference was, Dawn had no control over when she would be a crazy person.

So the best option would be to treat Dawn as sane, until she wasn't.

~*~

"Knock knock."

By now, Artie had become used to that. He no longer jumped out of his seat. There was, instead, merely a small jolt of surprise. "Claudia, how many times have a told you not to..." he trailed off, because he had just turned around and seen who had spoken.

It hadn't been Claudia. It had been Dawn.

"Dawn, you do know that it's customary to physically knock rather than just say "Knock knock", don't you?" Artie grumbled.

"Really? I thought it was a customary greeting among Warehouse agents." Dawn said drily.

"You're not a Warehouse agent."

"Oh, I know. I just live with some. Anyway, Claudia told me it was fun to watch you jump."

"Was there something you wanted? Other than to watch me jump, that is." Artie said acidly.

"Well, I was wondering when I'd get a tour of the Warehouse."

"Oh, not you too." Artie groaned. "It's bad enough with Claudia pestering me every few minutes. You're not getting a tour."

"I was hoping for a more specific tour, actually." Dawn began to chew her hair. "One of all the artefacts that might be able to cure my schizophrenia."

Artie rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Ah. I wondered how long it would be before you asked about that."

"Only, Pete said that the Warehouse is a world of endless wonder, and I was wondering if I might have a wander in the aisles to see if any if these wonders might be able to stop me wondering whether I actually exist or not."

"Did you say that solely to see how many times you could say wonder in one sentence?"

"Um, no? I kind of just started talking, and then I was struck by the word wonder and I wondered how often I might use it. I do that sometimes. Anyway, what about the artefacts?"

"We have whole avenues of artefacts that deal with forms of madness. We have piles of artefacts to make you madder, give you a different type of madness, even a couple which will make your hallucinations real. We also have an artefact from the Roman Empire, a Ferula Gemini, that could split you into sane and insane parts. But apparently there's a ritual to activate that, and we don't know what that is. And we have artefacts that would probably cure you, by putting you into a vegetative state."

"So, basically, the answer is no." Dawn said, disappointed. She rather suspected that she should be more than disappointed - more along the lines of crushed - but she had more or less expected that to be the case. She figured that someone would've told her before if she could be cured.

"I'm afraid so. I would have told you before, if there was one. It's just that, in many cultures, insanity isn't considered something to be cured. Some of them consider it more of a manifestation of the divine or something similar, and so sought to bring it on by any means necessary. So, we have no artefacts to cure it without dire consequences." Artie said apologetically.

Dawn shrugged. "Oh well. It was worth a shot."

Artie opened his mouth to tell her about the possibility that her own madness may be caused by an artefact of this type, then closed it again. It was better not to raise Dawn's hopes, not until he had something more solid to go on than a hunch.

"Is there something else?" Dawn asked. "Only you've got your mouth open as though you want to say something."

Artie shut it with a snap. Then he said "Would you tell Pete and Myka to come here? We've got a ping."

Dawn frowned. "A ping? Like the sound that a bicycle bell makes? Why do you want to tell them you've got a bicycle bell?"

Artie glared at Dawn. He couldn't tell whether she was serious or not. "A ping. A possibility of an artefact, out there, causing trouble."

"Oh! So, do you call them here, and you give them the Artie facts?" Dawn asked.

"No. I don't give out artefacts, they go and bring them here."

"I said Artie facts. Like facts given by Artie? Because you're Artie, and you're giving facts on artefacts..." Dawn trailed off in the face of Artie's glare.

"Most droll. I'd be much obliged if you don't tell Pete about that, because I'd never hear the end about it if you do."

"I make no promises."

"Dawn..." Artie growled. Dawn waltzed out, smiling.

Today was a good day.

~*~

Things were quiet without Pete and Myka around. Dawn, feeling better than she had for the past couple of weeks, even decided to leave off perfecting compass-less teleportation and instead played poker with Claudia and Joshua.

They didn't gamble for money, but Claudia insisted that they should gamble for something. Joshua jokingly suggested Leena's cookies, and was mildly surprised when the girls took him seriously and agreed.

He wasn't the only one who liked those cookies.

To begin with, Claudia came out on top. When asked how she did this, she vaguely alluded to some time in a casino learning the ropes. Dawn didn't press her to give more details, although Joshua looked slightly sick at the thought of his little sister in a casino.

After that, though, Dawn promptly gained the upper hand. She didn't win every hand, but the hands she did lose weren't ones that she had bet heavily on. But the ones she did win, she won spectacularly. Soon, she had accumulated the rights to eat enough cookies to feed a small country.

When asked how she did it, Dawn said that it was impossible for her to teach unless you were capable of holding ridiculous amounts of numbers in your head and doing lightning calculations. Claudia quite naturally accused her of cheating and demanded that we forfeit her right to her cookies, and the pair got into a good natured squabble that went something along the lines of endless repetitions of "Should not!" "Should too!"

This came to a screeching halt when Joshua sighed and said "I'm going to miss this."

"What?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are you going somewhere?"

"Why didn't you tell us you were going somewhere?"

"When are you going?"

"Where are you going?"

"What are you going?"

"What? Dawn, that doesn't even make any sense!"

"Oh, I've run out of questions, okay? Anyway, shouldn't we let Josh actually _answer_ these questions?"

Joshua eagerly seized the opportunity to do just that. "Artie got me a position at CERN-"

"That's in Switzerland."

"I know, Dawn, I don't have to be a fancy physics major to know where CERN is."

"Well, _excuse_ me."

"-and frankly I was getting a little tired of my little sister pestering me to go and do something with my life, so I thought I'd take the job. I was planning on telling you later. I'm leaving tomorrow." Joshua finished without missing a beat at the interruption.

Claudia was silent for several seconds before she said slowly. "So. You're going to CERN."

"I am." Joshua said warily.

Claudia walked over to him, hugged him, and murmured into his shoulder "Congratulations. I knew you could do it."

~*~

Sometime later, after having told Joshua several times to keep in touch (Joshua assured nothing could stop him from doing so) Dawn made her way up to Claudia's room.

"Knock knock."

Claudia jumped. "Argh! Okay _now_ I see why Artie doesn't like me doing that."

Dawn smirked. "That doesn't mean that you'll stop though, does it?"

"No, of course not."

Dawn rather reluctantly decided to broach the reason that she had come up here. "So, Josh is off to Switzerland."

"He is." Claudia replied blandly.

"How are we feeling about this?" Dawn asked warily.

It took several seconds for Claudia to respond. Eventually, she sighed and said "Good. I feel good, actually. I mean, I'll miss him, of course, but then I've been without him for the past twelve years so it's not actually all that big a wrench." Then Claudia looked sidelong at Dawn and said "Why am I telling you this, anyway? Have you even told your sister you're out of the psych hospital yet?"

It was like a shutter went down behind Dawn's eyes. Instantly, Claudia regretted speaking. On Dawn's good days, Claudia occasionally forgot that there were no-go areas of conversation. Dawn's family was one of them. "God, Dawn. Sorry."

Dawn flapped a hand. "No, it's quite alright. I haven't."

Claudia knew that she should say something to make this alright, and bring back the shiny happy Dawn that was making an appearance for the first time in weeks. Unfortunately, Claudia hadn't the faintest idea of how to do that.

Dawn, meanwhile, was trundling down the same mental road that she had trundled down so many times before. There was no point in contacting Joyce or Buffy until she had something to tell them. She wouldn't have anything to tell them unless she went back to the hospital and hoped that they could treat her, or if an artefact turned up that could cure her without turning her into a vegetable.

Which really boiled down to - LA or Univille?

As yet, Artie hadn't made a decision about what to do with the girls - or, if he had, he hadn't informed them. So, until he did, Dawn and Claudia were in limbo.

Dawn was sick of that.

"C'mon, Claud." Dawn said abruptly, seizing her friends arm and pulling her along.

"Wait, where are we going?" Claudia asked nervously.

"To see Artie. See if we can force him to figure out what to do with us."

~*~

"Knock knock."

This time, Artie didn't jump at all. "Now's really not the time."

Dawn opened her mouth to say something along the lines of "Well, you'd better make it time." but Claudia got there first.

Seeing that Artie was serious, Claudia asked "What's going on?"

"Pete's in hospital. He's been pushed through a moving truck."

"_Through_ a moving truck?" Dawn asked dubiously, not sure she'd heard correctly.

"Yes." Artie said shortly.

"Well, things around here are never dull."


	17. Chapter 17

"So, how come he was pushed through a moving truck, then?" Claudia asked, perching on the edge of Artie's desk. He was too preoccupied to even glare at her, which Claudia took to be a bad sign.

Artie hesitated a moment before answering. Technically speaking, he shouldn't be involving the pair in Warehouse business at all, but, on the other hand, they'd pester him unmercifully until he told them. Besides, they might possibly be helpful.

"The ping I sent Myka and Pete to investigate was someone using an artefact that lets them walk through solid objects. Someone is using it to collect a series of four sculptures, each of them representing a different element in Lenape culture. Pete was attacked while one of the sculptures was being moved to a safe place. Myka thinks that the sculptures are some sort of message, like the one inside Rheticus' compass." Artie answered succinctly.

Dawn began chewing her hair. Finding that to be insufficient to the task of calming her down, she also began to pace up and down, staring fixedly at the floor.

The reason that Dawn was feeling anxious was because she knew about the Lenape tribe. She even spoke Unami, one of the languages of that tribe, because she'd stumbled across it during her test to see which languages she could learn. She hadn't even planned to learn a Native American language at all, but this one had just appealed to her.

The upside to this was that she could almost certainly lend a hand in figuring out what message may or may not be hidden in the sculptures. But the downside was - Dawn didn't want to know Unami. She didn't want to know about the culture of a tribe that lived several states away from her own. She shouldn't know any of that. The only reason she did know about it was because she was a ball of energy that had presumably spent time in Lenape land. Understandably, that wasn't something that Dawn wanted to call to mind.

On the other hand, Pete was injured. If the attacker was willing to do that, then it was only a matter of time before someone else was hurt too. Or even killed.

But to use knowledge she shouldn't have would seem like confirming the fact that she was the Key to Dawn. As though she was giving in and accepting her neurosis, not even believing that she was crazy anymore.

Myka could be next. Dawn didn't want to see Myka hurt. And she might be able to stop it.

So, Dawn lifted her head and said quickly (before she could stop herself) "Solidity."

For a moment, Artie looked at her as though she had gone mad. Then he realised that this may in fact be the case, and he rapidly softened his expression.

Before he could say anything, though, Claudia jumped in and said "What are you talking about, Dawn?"

"Solidity. In Lenape culture, rock represents solidity. So the artefact that lets people walk through walls must be related to that." Dawn replied, beginning to wish that she hadn't spoken at all.

Artie tilted his head slightly. "How do you know that?"

Dawn waved away the question with a faux-nonchalant hand. Artie noticed an expression - not one he recognized, but nevertheless not one that he liked seeing - flash across Dawn's face. Evidently, that was something that he shouldn't talk about.

Claudia, who had also seen the expression, stepped in to rescue the situation. "Oh, don't ask, please, Artie. Dawn once gave me a three hour lecture on Welsh resistance to Norman invaders. Don't get her started."

"Oh, it wasn't that long. Ten minutes at most. I didn't even cover the whole subject." Dawn said, struggling not to seem overly relieved at the change of subject.

"Certainly felt like three hours." Claudia muttered.

Artie really wanted to ask why a physics student would know so much about history, but he guessed that that was a taboo topic and now wasn't the time to broach it.

Fortunately, Artie was saved from having to come up with something else to say when his Farnsworth went off. He shooed the pair out of the room.

~*~

"So, are you going to listen at the door?" Dawn asked.

Claudia put an innocent expression on her face. "Would I do that? Little old me? Would I listen at someone's door?"

"Yes." Dawn answered bluntly. "Yes, you would, and then you'd steal their car and abduct them."

"Ouch. I'm hurt that you'd think that, Dawn, I really am." Claudia put a hand over her heart and posed melodramatically. "On the other hand, listening at the door won't get you anywhere. I think it's soundproofed."

"And you know that how?"

"I've tried before." Claudia answered. Seeing Dawn's expression, she added "What can I say? I got curious."

Dawn decided to drop the subject. "How long do you think it will be before he's done in there?"

Claudia shrugged. "Don't know. He'll call us if he wants us, I suppose."

"So, ten minutes before we go in?"

"Make it five."

"Three?"

"Ooh, Dawn, I'm shocked. You're normally the conscientious one." Claudia said, poking Dawn playfully.

Dawn shrugged uncomfortably. She feared that if she didn't go in soon, she'd lose her nerve. And then she would never forgive herself if someone else got hurt and there was anything at all that she could have done to stop it.

Not that that would stop her losing her nerve, of course. Dawn couldn't figure out whether confirming (if only to herself) that she was the Key or allowing for the possibility of someone being hurt and feeling guilty about it was worse. Dawn was only holding to her current course because backing out might encourage Artie to send her back to the psych hospital by herself, and Dawn didn't want that.

However, if she didn't do _something_ soon, Dawn wouldn't care about that. She'd be back in her room like a shot, and she could deal with the guilt, should there even be any need for it, later.

Still, there was no need to worry Claudia with any of that. So, Dawn plastered a smile on her face and said brightly "Hey, don't we go play a few hands why we wait?"

Claudia smiled back. "Sure."

~*~

Claudia knew Dawn, better than Dawn thought she did. Claudia knew when something was bothering her friend. She could recognize when Dawn was faking a smile.

Claudia didn't like talking about emotions. After Joshua's accident, she had never had anyone to talk to about them anyway. Just counsellors, which didn't help. Or foster parents, who tried to be sympathetic (well, the nicer ones, anyway. Some of them... well, they hadn't be so nice) but sooner or later they'd expected Claudia to get over what was bothering her, and she never had. Never could.

So Claudia had grown up pretty isolated. It wasn't as though she could talk to her computers (well, she could, and she frequently had, but they couldn't do anything but listen). So, eventually, she had learned to hide herself behind a wall, hide the nerves that were still raw from the loss of her family, and present the world the brash youth that everyone came to know as Claudia.

Seeing Joshua appear had shattered that wall. But, again, there was no one to listen to her - no one but the psychiatrists.

Then Dawn had come. Just when Claudia had hit the lowest point in her life, someone in the same boat as her had come along. Neither of them had any walls to keep the other out. They'd both seen each other at their lowest points, and they hadn't turned away.

That was why Claudia had tried to hang herself, when Dawn had said she wouldn't go with her. It was like her wall had broken, all over again, presenting her beating heart for the world to stamp on.

So, to anyone else, Claudia was still the same person that she had been before her stay in psych hospital. Still impetuous, and fiery.

But not for Dawn. Claudia didn't have to hide behind her wall when she was with Dawn. For Dawn, there was no wall.

Dawn knew Claudia better than anyone else. But that worked both ways. Claudia knew that Dawn was hiding something from Claudia, something that was deeply bothering her friend. She knew that the only reason that Dawn would hide something from her would be to stop her worrying, but Claudia was worrying anyway.

Besides, wasn't sharing problems supposed to make them easier?

Unfortunately, Claudia had virtually no experience dealing with this kind of problem. She couldn't just request a diagnostic. Claudia hadn't the faintest idea of how to proceed.

So, for fear of making things worse, Claudia said nothing. She just sat and played poker and watched her friend suffer, and felt guilty because she didn't know what to do about it.

~*~

Artie didn't call them back. Equally, when they returned to the office, he didn't turn them away.

Instead, he filled them in on what was going on. Apparently, someone named Radburn owned a cloak that allowed him to pass through solid objects. He was after a quartet of artefacts, which Artie melodramatically claimed would grant him tremendous power. The sculptures (which Radburn now had) were supposed to be a map leading to these artefacts.

Then, Artie came to the part which had led him not to turn the pair away when they came back.

The only clue that Pete and Myka had found about how the sculptures might give up their secret was that "The truth is in the dawn".

Artie suspected that Dawn's schizophrenia may have been brought about by an artefact. The fact that she knew about Lenape culture only supported that. This made him almost certain.

Despite all of that, Artie wasn't sure. Not completely. It could well be a coincidence. Which was why he hadn't called the pair in, either.

Naturally, Artie didn't mention any of that. He just laid out the facts and hoped that one of them would make something out of it. Because he was stumped, and Pete and Myka didn't have the time to search all of Manhattan.

Dawn had heard just about every pun based on her name that it was possible to imagine. The fact that her surname was Summers hadn't helped either. So when Claudia grinned and opened her mouth, Dawn cut her off and said "If you make a joke about my name, I _will_ shoot you." She smiled, though, to make sure Claudia knew she was joking.

Perhaps it was the fact that Dawn had been teased about her name for years, and found anything related to the rising of the sun to be distinctly unamusing, but she had an idea.

"Claudia" Dawn said slowly, as she waited for the idea to unfold in its entirety "you can run simulations on a computer, can't you?"

"I can." Claudia answered. "But why?"

"Find pictures of the sculptures, or reconstruct them or whatever it is that you do, and then run a simulation showing what would happen if the rising sun shines on them."

"There's four sculptures, there's got to be dozens of combinations." Artie interjected.

"Only 24." Dawn answered. "Can you do it or not?"

"Sure I can, as soon as Artie gets of out the way." Claudia replied, wheeling Artie away from the computer. Because she was already thinking about how to do what Dawn had asked, she didn't even notice that Artie didn't protest.

~*~

Not long afterwards, Claudia had a series of 24 abstract images. Until Artie identified one of them as a map of Manhattan with a beam of light indicating a certain spot on it. Then they had 23 abstract images, and one map.

"Great." Said Artie, fumbling for his Farnsworth. "I'll show that to Pete and Myka and they can stop Radburn when he goes there."

"Hold on just a mo..." Claudia said. "There! I've got you an actual location for you to give them."

~*~

In the morning, Myka and Pete intercepted Radburn, confiscated his cloak and used it to recover the other four artefacts. They then handed Radburn over to the authorities, who charged him with theft. Artie hoped the Regents would intervene to make sure the charge stuck, and maybe charged him with something else as well. A man like Radburn around could be dangerous.

Artie realised that Dawn's knowledge of the Lenape tribe hadn't been necessary. She had still solved the case, though, but by using common sense.

Artie didn't know where that left the situation. The truth had been in the dawn, but not because of any artefact. It didn't lead him any closer to knowing whether or not Dawn's schizophrenia was artefact-induced.

~*~

Independently, Dawn also realised that she hadn't had to use any of her knowledge to solve the case. She hadn't had to confirm to herself that she was the Key - at least, to no greater extent than she had by claiming to be called Sol Invictus.

But the fact remained that she could have done. Indeed, Dawn would have done, had it been necessary.

This rather spoiled the fact that she had just helped recover a group of artefacts. In fact, it not only counteracted the buzz that gave but made Dawn anxious. An anxiety that she hadn't felt since she had thought that she might be a hallucination of Claudia's - an idea that had been, ironically, dispelled by the very same knowledge that was causing this bout of anxiety.

Dawn had dealt with it last time by punching a wall until her knuckles bled. That wouldn't cut it, this time. She felt worse, now. Because she had come so close to giving in. To accepting the fact that she was the Key, to not accepting that she was schizophrenic but rather embracing her delusion.

She wouldn't do that again. But still, Dawn needed something to dispel this terrible gnawing sensation wrapped around her gut. Pain had worked last time. Now she just needed more of it.

There were knives in the kitchen.


	18. Chapter 18

Artie didn't know what to do with Dawn.

Claudia wasn't a problem. Artie knew she had nothing in her life besides the Warehouse, and he didn't doubt that she had capability to be a good agent. He was fairly sure that she would stay, if he asked her.

But Dawn was a problem, and not just because she had a life beyond the Warehouse.

Artie knew that, with a mind like hers, Dawn could be a tremendous asset. She'd never be a field agent, but then Leena wasn't either. Dawn could still be useful, as she had proved yesterday.

On the other hand, artefacts were, in some form, sapient. They responded to the world around them - more specifically, to the people around them. Leena and described Dawn's aura to Artie, and he was reluctant to allow someone with an aura like that anywhere near an artefact. There was no telling how it might respond.

Although, that said, if her schizophrenia was caused by an artefact, they wouldn't react at all. Even if it wasn't, there was still the chance that nothing would happen. No one knew how artefacts might react.

Added to that was the chance that she might have an episode in the Warehouse itself. She might use one of the artefacts (or an artefact might use her), and something suitably melodramatic would ensue.

However, if Dawn's schizophrenia was caused by an artefact, the Warehouse was the best place for her. Artie believed that there was greater chance of curing her than if Dawn went back to LA.

Then there was Claudia. She was certainly attached to Dawn, and Artie didn't want to lose them both. He wanted to help them, to make up for not being able to help Claudia twelve years ago (and all those other people, both before and after that, which he hadn't been able to help either).

Artie couldn't decide. Dawn had been instrumental in retrieving the Lenape artefacts and stopping Radburn. But that wasn't to say that the instability might not negate that, in the future.

Fortunately, Mrs Frederic hadn't given him a deadline. He still had time.

Just not all the time in the world.

~*~

A week after that, Pete died. He was electrocuted to death.

He wasn't dead for long. Myka resuscitated him, and there was no harm done. The artefact that had caused his death, the Spine of Saracen, was destroyed.

Pete, being Pete, made jokes about it. Everyone took his cue from him. Even Myka, because she didn't really want to have to deal with the fact that Pete had been, if only for a short time, dead. Right there in front of her. But, if Pete could joke about it, then what right did she have to hold onto the despair that had nearly crippled her, that had nearly sent her back to the dark days after Sam's death?

However, there was a world of difference between celebrating the fact that you're alive and accepting that you had been dead.

It hit Pete early in the morning.

He dreamt that the Spine was still attached to him, spitting out bolts of electricity that set his nervous system afire. And, still worse, the corrosive need to clean up the world, to kill bad guys, burning in his brain. But this time, there was no one to help Pete. No Myka. Nothing. Just him and the Spine.

Pete didn't know how he managed to wrench himself awake, but he did. He lay there, drenched in sweat, and tried to calm his heart that seemed intent on hammering its way out of his ribcage.

Pete didn't remember what it had been like, being dead. It was a hole in his memory, like the alcohol-induced blackouts he had used to get. But he couldn't help but wonder - what if that was it? Just his last few moments, stretching onwards for eternity.

It was a disturbing thought. Not at all the kind that Pete normally indulged in. He didn't particularly want to indulge in it now.

So, instead on dwelling upon his death, Pete decided to go for a very early morning run.

It wasn't until he got up that Pete realised that the feeling that seemed intent in squishing the air out of his lungs wasn't entirely thanks to his nightmare.

Pete was vibing. It was a bad vibe.

As much as Pete wanted to just leave all his worries behind (_but not in the bottom of a glass. Never that._) he knew better than to ignore a vibe.

Even if it there did happen to be a storm outside.

And, apparently, also a person, standing at the end of the driveway, staring out into the night.

It wasn't Myka, she stood differently. It was the wrong shape for Artie. It could be Leena, but Pete had never known her not to sleep through the night. Which left Claudia or Dawn, and somehow Pete didn't think that Claudia was the type to stare blindly out into the rain. Which left Dawn.

The recently dead man was vibing about the schizophrenic girl. If someone had told Pete about that, before he'd been assigned to the Warehouse, he'd have laughed at them.

As it was, Pete just sighed, got dressed and brought an umbrella.

~*~

Out of everyone at the Warehouse, Pete was the one who knew Dawn least. So, he hadn't noticed the shut off look behind her eyes that she had had, as she joined in the celebration of Pete's resurrection. He hadn't noticed the wristband that now permanently enveloped her left wrist, since the Lenape artefacts had been retrieved. He hadn't noticed the way, occasionally, Dawn would stare of into space with a contemplative look on her face, squeezing her band-covered wrist so hard that her knuckles went white.

So, when Pete went out into the rain, he just assumed that Dawn was having a schizophrenic episode. He assumed that he would calm her down, like Myka had before.

He didn't know that something else, other than the problem of her existence, was bothering Dawn.

It wasn't until Pete covered Dawn with the umbrella that she even seemed to notice he was there.

"Hey." Pete said softly.

It took several seconds before Dawn stopped chewing her hair and pushing her thumb against each of her fingers in turn. Eventually, she said "Good morning."

"Morning." Pete said absently. "Yeah, I suppose it is morning by now."

Dawn didn't reply. Pete hadn't really expected her to. "What are you doing out this early?"

"Counting the raindrops."

Before Pete stopped to think, he asked "Why?" incredulously.

"What was it like, being dead?" Dawn asked. For the first time, she took her attention away from the nocturnal downpour and turned to face Pete. Pete, already put off guard by the non-sequitur, found that he was disconcerted by the expression in Dawn's eyes.

"I don't remember." Pete said, truthfully. Now, after having fully entered the waking world, the nightmarish idea that death might just be his last moment lasting forever seemed absurd.

Dawn looked down, and her fingers crept to the wrist hidden beneath the wristband. "It must be nice."

"What must be?" Pete asked, uncomprehending.

"Having a place just to slot into. You were dead, and now you're just going on with your life as though nothing happened." Dawn murmured, slim fingers encircling her wrist.

"Yeah, well, it was all in the line of duty." Pete replied, uncomfortably, not really sure what Dawn was talking about.

"It could have stopped, if I'd pushed just a little bit harder. I could have stopped. Someone else could take my slot." Dawn said in a voice barely audible above the sound of the rain splashing in the puddles. She picked absently at the wristband.

"No one's going to take your slot, Dawn." Pete said.

Then it hit him like a lightning bolt, like the numerous bolts from the Spine. And it hurt about as much.

"Oh, Dawn." Pete said, trying to pour as much compassion into those two syllables as he could. "No one wants to take your slot-"

"Of course no one wants my slot! _I_ don't want my slot, that's the whole _point_. You can die and just slip back in again. You're - you're comfortable there. I just want it to stop!" Dawn yelled. Then she repeated, in a broken voice "I just want it to stop."

It was an idea that had sprouted in Dawn's head last week. When she'd decided that punching the wall over and over just wasn't enough. That she needed something more heavy duty.

Dawn hadn't thought about what she would do. Just the idea of knives in general had seemed like a good idea.

It wasn't until Dawn felt the sharp, delicious pain of the knife across her skin that she had thought - all it would take is a little more pressure, and the world would go away. _She_ would go away.

She hadn't done it, of course. At the time, the pain had been enough to make the emotional turmoil go away. Dawn hadn't needed to make everything else go away too.

But, afterwards, Dawn had kept drifting back to it. She hadn't meant to. She knew that suicide was something that shouldn't even enter her head, let alone be an idea she seriously entertained.

But the problem was that it would solve - well, everything. Dawn wouldn't need to worry if she existed if she were dead. She wouldn't have to struggle to hold onto the belief that she was sane. The Abomination wouldn't catch up to her.

She hadn't done it, even if it seemed logical. Because Dawn remembered how she had felt, when Greene had told her that Claudia had tried to kill herself. There were no words for it. Nothing Dawn had felt (nothing that she had felt while sane, that is) had even come close to that. The very idea of putting Claudia through that, when Claudia had been devastated merely by Dawn refusing to go and save Joshua, was unthinkable. Not to mention what it would do to Buffy.

Dawn knew that things would (might, if she was lucky) get better. That suicide was final. That there were dozens of reasons not to even consider it (even if she couldn't think of them, right then).

But it was still tempting.

"I felt like that." Pete said. Dawn got the impression that he wasn't even talking to her, anymore. He was just speaking aloud, because some things had to be said. "When the pain from the Spine got too much. I just wanted it to end. I didn't care if the Spine was destroyed or not, or if I died. Everything just came down to the desire to make it stop."

Pete's hands clenched into fists, as he remembered the smell of ozone as the electricity arced through the air. The stench of his flesh, burning. And all of that fading to background, playing second fiddle to the unbelievable pain, so much pain that he could barely see.

Then he smoothed his hands out again, as Pete remembered what had changed his mind.

He'd been barely able to see Myka's face, but he knew he'd never forget it. Seeing loss like that, on the face of someone that you cared for, wasn't something you forgot. Pete had decided, then, to bear the pain. For her. Because his pain was physical, and he'd get over it. But loss - that took longer to recover from. Pete hadn't wanted the put Myka through that.

Pete didn't know if that thought had helped him, when Myka resuscitated him. He certainly hoped so. It should.

"But, I saw Myka. I saw her pain, and it was every bit as bad as what I was going through. And I'd rather I'd had twice the pain than she had any, Dawn. Because she's my friend. So, don't do it. For the people who care for you. Just... don't."

Dawn didn't say anything for a long time. After a while, Pete didn't think she would. So they just stood in companionable silence, each mulling over their own wounds.

Eventually, Dawn said "I won't."

Pete smiled.

~*~

The first thing Pete did that morning (once it was no longer unbelievably early) was go and see Artie.

"When was the last time you spoke to Dawn?" Pete asked, without preamble.

Artie didn't look up. "Last night."

"I mean _really_ talk to her."

"Last night."

Pete thumped a fist on Artie's desk. Artie flinched, then began to pay greater attention. Pete didn't get angry. Sure, he did childish pouting, but not genuine anger, not that Artie had seen.

He was angry now.

"Damnit, Artie! Can't you just make a decision? She's falling apart, because she doesn't know where she stands. It's bad enough that she's schizophrenic without waiting in you to determine her life." Pete growled.

"Do you think I don't know that?" Artie said calmly. "Do you think I can't see that she's in pain? Do you think I'm _blind_? But I don't know what to do, Pete. I don't know what's best for her, or for the Warehouse. I can't tell. So do you want to make the decision? Do you, Pete? Go ahead! It's your call!"

"What does it matter what you choose? Anything would be better than - than this limbo! Leave or stay, at least she knows what to do then. Just - just don't leave her hanging, that's all I'm saying."

"Fine, I'll tell you what. I'll toss a coin." Artie said sarcastically.

Pete's mouth worked silently. Eventually he managed "You're impossible." before walking out.

Artie waited until he was sure that Pete had gone, before he pulled a coin out of his pocket.

It was as good a way to make an impossible choice as any.


	19. Chapter 19

Not even Artie knew how artefacts were made.

Most of the time, they were made either by people doing heroic things (or dastardly things) or something catastrophic happening to someone (or something miraculous).

For example, Artie knew there was a fire ladder that caused anyone who climbed it to burn to death. This was because that happened to someone who had used it.

But, firemen did die in fires. Not all of those deaths resulted in an artefact - far from it.

Artie knew that tossing a coin to decide the fate of a girl was the kind of thing that created artefacts. As a matter of fact, there was an entire shelf in the Warehouse devoted to coins that had been used for similar purposes. There were some that came out only heads or only tails, no matter what you did to them. Or landed on their edge. Or never landed at all.

But people did use coin tosses to decide things without them turning into artefacts. Many people used coins to decide which university offer to accept, or which job to take. And these coins didn't turn into artefacts.

Artie knew that there was every possibility that he had created an artefact or two, in his time.

But Artie didn't let this bother him, as he tossed a coin to decide Dawn's future.

It landed, as coins sometimes do, heads up. Artie asked Leena by Farnsworth to ask Dawn to come into his office.

~*~

Dawn wasn't really surprised when Artie sent for her. She guessed that Pete must've told her about her suicidal thoughts, and Artie had finally decided to send her away.

Oddly enough, Dawn wasn't greatly bothered by this. A decision had been made. It wasn't a decision that she particularly liked (but then, she didn't particularly like the other option either) but one had been made.

So Dawn made her way to Artie's office with a lighter heart than she had had for quite a long time.

~*~

Artie didn't talk to Dawn immediately. He merely regarded her over steepled fingers, in what she found to be a vaguely menacing way.

Artie didn't do this to make Dawn uncomfortable, although that happened anyway. No, Artie was trying to work out if the decision he had made, with the help of a coin toss, was the right one.

But then, there was no point second guessing himself. He'd come to a decision, and changing it wouldn't get him anywhere.

"Tell me, Dawn what do you think of challenges?" Artie said.

Dawn blinked. That really hadn't been the question she'd been expecting. Truthfully, she hadn't been expecting any question, just a rather brusque declaration that she should go back to LA. "I like them, actually."

"Even the kind like finding the Lenape artefacts, last week?"

"Um, yes?" Dawn said, making the answer a question. She _really_ didn't know what was going on now. "It was more challenging than anything back at university, actually." she added, on the off chance that that was relevant.

"Do you think you could cope with other challenges of that sort? Challenges with higher stakes?"

_Probably not_. Dawn thought. If she couldn't even manage to decide if she preferred the idea of going to LA or staying here, then making decisions involving other people's lives would probably send her into meltdown. The mere revelation that artefacts existed had triggered a schizophrenic episode, after all.

On the other hand, she'd done just fine with the Lenape artefacts, and a girl (even a schizophrenic one) has her pride... "Yeah, sure." Dawn said.

Artie looked at her for several seconds before leaning back in his chair and saying neutrally "The Warehouse has a lot of challenges like that."

Dawn's eyes widened as she finally realised what was going on. Artie wasn't telling her to leave. No, she was being invited to stay!

Damn.

That meant that the decision was, finally, hers. Just hers. Which meant that she actually had to make it. Which she couldn't do.

Dawn was standing on a knife edge, and the slightest tremor would have her falling on one side or another.

The problem was, Dawn couldn't try and stay balanced anymore. She had to take the plunge.

Because standing on a knife edge for so long was hurting her feet.

There were two choices. Stay or go. 50/50. Heads or tails.

Dawn closed her eyes, and said, without the faintest idea what was going to come out of her mouth before it actually did, "I'm sure it does."

"Think you'd be up for that?"

"Yes. Yes, I think so." Dawn said. Then she opened her eyes and smiled. Finally, she was getting somewhere. She didn't really know where she was going, but at least she wasn't stuck in limbo any longer. _Alea iacta est._ The die has been cast.

Artie smiled back. "In that case, Dawn, let me be the first to welcome you to the Warehouse."

~*~

Naturally, the first thing that Dawn did was go and find Claudia, to share the news with her.

"Hey, Claud! Guess what?"

"Pete left you a cookie?" Claudia said sarcastically.

"No."

"Pete ate all your clothes?"

"No. Wait, why would Pete eat all my clothes?"

"Ferret Pete."

"No."

Claudia sighed. "Dawn, as you might've figured out, I'm not great at guessing games. Could you just tell me?"

Dawn grinned. "Artie asked me to stay."

"You mean...?"

"At the Warehouse, yeah."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"And you accepted?"

"Yeah."

Claudia began pushing her thumb against her fingers. Dawn doubted that Claudia even knew she was doing it. "That's great, Dawn. I didn't think you would."

Dawn sat next to her friend. "You thought he'd ask?"

Claudia looked at her friend. That really hadn't been the point. She had always thought that Artie would be stupid not to ask Dawn to stay, especially after the Lenape business.

But Claudia hadn't expected Dawn to take him up on it. She'd thought that Dawn would leave the Warehouse. And more importantly, leave her. Again.

But she hadn't. Dawn was staying, she was sitting right next to Claudia telling her that she was staying, and oh crap Claudia was going to cry...

"Yes, Dawn. I knew he'd ask you." Claudia said, biting the inside of her cheeks.

Dawn looked at her oddly. Claudia knew that her efforts not to start crying weren't fooling her friend in the slightest.

Fortunately, Dawn misread the situation and came to entirely the wrong conclusion as to why Claudia was upset. "C'mon, Claud. Let's go and see Artie, I'm sure he'll ask you to stay too."

~*~

"Knock knock." Dawn said.

To his credit, Artie didn't even flinch. He'd gotten used to that by now. "What is it, Dawn?"

"Well, I thought that maybe, since you've come to a decision about me, if you might have made one about Claudia, too." Dawn said.

Artie rubbed his moustache absently. "Didn't I do that already?"

"No." Claudia replied.

"Do you want to stay?"

Claudia most emphatically didn't look at Dawn when she said "Yes."

"Then you can stay."


	20. Chapter 20

Claudia was bored. She wouldn't have thought it possible, but apparently cataloguing artefacts for hours made even endless wonder seem mundane.

Claudia didn't even have Dawn around to take her mind of the sheer mind-numbing drudgery, because, according to Leena, Dawn's aura might interact with artefacts and make them misbehave.

So when Artie convened a meeting for Warehouse agents (by which he meant Myka, Leena and Pete. Most emphatically not Claudia or Dawn) Claudia had no qualms whatsoever in deciding to eavesdrop on the briefing.

She hoped that she could convince Dawn to be her partner-in-crime. Everything was so much more fun with an accomplice.

~*~

Dawn was also bored, which was unusual. She was working on artefact-less teleportation, and she normally heartily enjoyed that kind of thing. But today, Dawn felt listless.

Actually, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she was frustrated. Claudia had taken full advantage of Artie's offer to stay, and gone gallivanting off into the Warehouse at the first possible opportunity. And Dawn couldn't follow. It wasn't as though it was her fault that she was schizophrenic. She couldn't control her aura.

It was discrimination. More than that, it made Dawn query why Artie would want her around. If she couldn't go near any artefacts, then why on Earth would anyone offer her a job around them? It made no sense.

So, even as Dawn tried to make teleportation a reality, she was simultaneously trying to come up with every possible reason Artie might have to keep her around. Because Dawn was clever, and could solve two problems at once. Well, she could _try_, but she hadn't actually gotten anywhere with either of them yet.

So, when Claudia came and asked whether she would like to eavesdrop on Artie's briefing, Dawn leapt at the chance.

At last, something that she might actually be able to solve!

~*~

Pete whistled when Artie laid a sword on the table. "Whew, Artie! That's some _serious_ weaponry you've got going on there!"

"Yes, well, it's actually a replica, not the real thing." Artie said. "It's supposed to be the _Honjo Masamune_."

"Honjo what now?" Pete said, hand creeping forward to touch the sword. Artie slapped it away.

"Ancient Japanese samurai sword." Artie replied crossly.

"Artie, tell me you're not telling us we have to substitute this for the real one?" Myka asked plaintively.

Silence. Then- "Cool! A heist!" Pete exclaimed, excitedly.

"The real sword's being flown in from Japan as a gift to the President in a few days. And you're going to swap this for the artefact." Artie explained, avoiding Myka's glare.

"What does it do?" Leena asked.

"Well, you know how ducks fly in a V formation, because it splits the air and makes it easier for them to fly?" Artie said

Outside the room, Claudia whispered "So the sword splits the air and - what, makes the person holding it faster?"

"I doubt it." Dawn whispered back. "A sword's much sharper than a duck's beak. I'm betting it splits something else. Or maybe it's just absurdly sharp."

Artie's head popped around the doorway. Dawn and Claudia leapt back in surprise at its sudden appearance. "Dawn. Claudia. Be so kind as to come and join this meeting. The fact that you weren't invited doesn't matter, does it? It's not as if this meeting is classified beyond top secret."

"I get the distinct feeling that he's being sarcastic." Dawn said from the corner of her mouth. Claudia laughed despite herself.

"Oh, come on, Artie." Myka said. "You may as well tell them."

"They don't need to know." Artie replied.

"That doesn't mean that we shouldn't tell them."

"Actually, I rather think it does."

"Will you two stop bickering?" Leena interjected. "Artie, they've already heard most of it anyway. You may as well let them listen to the rest."

Artie threw his hands up in surrender. "Fine! They can stay."

"You were telling us what the artefact did?" Pete prompted in placatory tones.

"It splits light." Artie said grumpily. "It makes the holder invisible. It's also ridiculously sharp."

"Told you so." Dawn said.

Claudia stuck out her tongue in response, then said "Artie, does the sword make the wielder faster, too?"

"I don't know. If they do move faster, you wouldn't be able to tell, would you? He'd be invisible." Artie answered. "Now, if you're going to stay, stop acting like children and listen." Artie said.

~*~

As it turned out, it wasn't just Dawn and Claudia that Artie had trouble sharing information with. It was everyone else too.

For example, he hadn't told any of them about his past. Or, more importantly, about the part of his past containing one James MacPherson. Which led to Artie being stabbed, a priceless artefact ending up in the hands of a dangerous person who was against everything that the Warehouse stood for, and a great flaming row between Myka and Artie about his trust issues, which was left unresolved.

Dawn knew she shouldn't, but she blamed herself. There should've been something she could've done. She should have learnt Japanese and Japanese culture, even though it wasn't one of the places that Dawn found strangely familiar with. She should've been able to figure out that Ogawa was MacPherson's man, even though, without being there, there was absolutely no way she could have.

Dawn blamed herself for Artie's stabbing, for every that had gone wrong, because she couldn't help but think that she had jinxed it. That if she hadn't agreed to stay, this wouldn't have happened. Everything always started going wrong when she got involved.

Dawn told Claudia this.

"Dawn, for a clever person, you can be really stupid sometimes." Claudia said in response. "You aren't a jinx. Things go wrong. You had nothing to do with it."

"But-"

"But nothing. Dawn, it wasn't your fault. Not even Artie could blame you." Claudia interrupted. "Anyway, if you hadn't gotten involved in _my_ life, I'd probably still be in the psych hospital convinced that I was crazy, and Joshua would still be stuck in his pocket dimension. You aren't a jinx."

Dawn nodded, smiled, and ignored everything that Claudia said. While she knew full well that blaming herself was illogical, she did so anyway. She messed up everything she touched, from her parents' marriage to a simple artefact retrieval.

Claudia knew that Dawn didn't believe her when she said that it wasn't her fault. But there was nothing she could do about that.

If Claudia had been a different person, she might've told someone, Leena, perhaps, or Myka. Even Pete, if she caught him in the right mood. She might have sought advice.

But Claudia was too used on relying on no one but herself. So, not knowing what to do, she did nothing.

All she could do was try and find MacPherson before he did anything else. And hope that, sooner rather than later, an artefact would be found to cure Dawn.


	21. Chapter 21

The thing about guilt is that it doesn't ever stop. It colours your every waking action. In some extreme cases, it even fills your dreams.

So, when Dawn smiled at Artie, she felt guilty because it was her fault he had been stabbed. She felt guilty because she hadn't figured out how to teleport yet. She felt guilty that she couldn't help find MacPherson.

The only time when Dawn didn't feel guilty was when she was having a schizophrenic episode. That was because Dawn was, usually, filled with such crippling fear that the Abomination would get her that Dawn simply couldn't feel anything else.

Of course, in reality, Dawn had nothing to feel guilty about. She knew that. But having delusions of grandeur was symptomatic of schizophrenia, and as someone who believed that she was a ball of energy that had acted as a focal point for centuries upon centuries of religious rituals, Dawn certainly had that symptom.

The thing about guilt is that it only stops when you realise that there isn't actually anything to be guilty about. And Dawn, spending almost all of her time trying to create the formulae for teleportation, didn't have anything to take her mind off her guilty conscience. She had plenty of time to dwell on things that were (supposedly) her fault.

Fortunately, Dawn worked at the Warehouse. Sooner or later, something was bound to happen to take Dawn out of her wallowing.

~*~

It started when a grumpy Artie, probably made worse by pain killers, made everyone take inventory in the Warehouse.

Pete, however, wasn't a filing clerk. He was a field agent, which meant that he should be out in the field. Not stuck in the Warehouse, day after day, cataloguing absolutely everything.

Unlike Myka, who would conscientiously do anything her superiors ordered (although she would protest), Pete, after a while, decided that he just couldn't be bothered with all of this.

He was, after all, in a Warehouse full of interesting things. If Artie wasn't going to allow him into the field, then Pete was just going to have to make his own fun.

So, Pete found a mirror (Lewis Carroll's Looking Glass, no less) and started playing table tennis with his reflection.

Pete wasn't clumsy. Not really. Anyone who was allowed to carry a firearm in the name of the US government couldn't be clumsy.

But accidents did happen.

It totally wasn't Pete's fault that a great big disco ball fell from a shelf and filled the Warehouse with light and disco music. He didn't even like disco music! Artie couldn't possibly blame him for that... well, he could, but it was really Artie's fault, not his. Artie shouldn't put a field agent on clerk duty.

Not that Pete actually said any of that to Artie. Artie, contrary to his usual manner, let it go and instead gave him and Myka the details of a couple small time crooks in Vegas (Vegas!) who were apparently ridiculously lucky. The kind of luck that might be artefact-y.

Pete guessed that the lack of snark about the disco ball had something to do with Leena looming over Artie's shoulder.

But never mind that. It looked as though Pete was back in action!

So preoccupied was Pete that he didn't notice that Myka was unusually subdued. And seeing as how Pete didn't notice, and Leena was invested in making sure that Artie didn't brood about MacPherson, and no one else was sensitive enough to pick up on it, no one else noticed either.

~*~

Myka generally didn't look at the floor. There was rarely anything of interest on it. There better things to look at than the floor.

On the other hand, when the floor is all you can see, you don't really have a choice but to examine it in the minutest detail possible.

Myka wasn't sure what had happened. The last thing she remembered was Pete playing table tennis with his reflection, the disco ball falling, rushing to catch a falling mirror...

And now Myka was here. Except that there was nothing here. Nothing but her, the darkness and the cold. It was pretty unnerving.

Because the floor was a lot less scary than the endless darkness that surrounded her, Myka stared at it until her eyes hurt. It was, she knew, the Warehouse floor. She'd walked on it dozens of times. Which meant that she was in the Warehouse.

Except that the Warehouse wasn't just some dark, cold abyss. It had things in it. Things besides her.

On the other hand, Myka couldn't actually touch the floor. There was something blocking it, something that felt like glass.

So, perhaps Myka wasn't in the Warehouse after all. If Rheticus' compass could transport someone between dimensions, then surely other artefacts could do the same. Myka must've accidentally activated one.

She struggled not to panic when she remembered that it had taken twelve years for Joshua to be freed. Myka couldn't survive this darkness anywhere close to that long. She would go crazy.

However, Myka at least had a window to the Warehouse, even if it was currently showing the floor.

Hang on...

Windows were made out of glass. So, incidentally, were mirrors. And Myka had been holding a mirror before she'd been sucked into this place.

Which meant that Myka had been sucked into the mirror, which had then fallen over. That explained why she could only see the floor.

Sooner or later, someone would be bound to notice that she was missing, and then figure out how to get her out.

Myka, feeling slightly comforted, settled down to another round of floor watching.

~*~

Artie, Claudia decided, was a control freak. He had to have everything just so, or else he'd flip his lid and go on a rant.

Claudia knew this, because after protesting that they didn't really need to trek into the bowels of the Warehouse to check on the disco ball Pete had accidentally activated, Artie ranted at her.

Which really wasn't fair. She'd only made a comment. Okay, so Artie _did_ have a point - if one artefact had been disturbed, others might have been too - but he really didn't have to shout at her about it.

Claudia envied Dawn. At least no one ranted at her.

~*~

Claudia realised that Artie might actually have good reason to be a control freak. Because, if they hadn't gone to check on the artefacts, they wouldn't have seen the mirror, and if they hadn't seen the mirror, they wouldn't have seen Myka _in_ the mirror.

Unfortunately, Artie quickly came to the conclusion that Myka was in fact not Myka but some evil thing wanting to get out of the mirror.

Claudia didn't agree with that. She'd seen Myka's face when they'd lifted the mirror from the floor. She'd seen that expression before, and it wasn't evil.

It was the same expression that Joshua had worn, when he'd first appeared to her. It was an expression of utter, utter relief. Relief that someone could see her, someone that she could trust to help her.

But Claudia didn't say any of that to Artie. Artie was probably right (after all, if an evil thing did want to escape, wouldn't it also wear an expression like that?).

Still, Claudia couldn't help but think that Artie had gotten the wrong end of the stick here. So she contacted Leena via the Farnsworth, hoping that she would side with her.

Because, if the person in the mirror was Myka, who was walking around in Myka's body?

~*~

Strangely, Leena didn't come alone.

She brought Dawn with her. Which didn't make sense, because Leena had been the one to suggest that Dawn stay well away from the artefacts, because she might make them act weirdly.

Artie, of course, picked up on that and said "What's she doing here?"

Leena didn't reply, she just looked at Dawn uncomfortably.

"People." Dawn said, quietly. "There are people, here. And I really need to be around people right now."

Claudia quietly got up to stand next to her friend. Not so close as to invade her personal space, but close enough that Dawn would know that she was there to support her.

Dawn shifted her feet slightly so that she stood closer to Claudia.

"So, um, what's going on? Leena said something about a mirror, but I - kind of didn't listen." Dawn said, looking at her feet. She didn't really feel the need to say why she hadn't listened to what Leena had said.

Artie explained briefly about Myka and the mirror.

"Have you tried talking to her?" Dawn asked.

Artie shook his head. "We've seen her speak, but we can't hear her. Claudia was going to rig something to read vibrations in the glass so we can understand her."

Dawn tilted her head to one side. "Can't you lip read?"

"No. Can you?" Artie replied.

"Sure." Dawn said. She began feeling better, not just because she was no longer dwelling on the schizophrenic episode she had just had, but because she was doing something to help. This was something she could do.

It was the first step towards atoning for the guilt she felt.

"Uh, Artie? Maybe we should wait for Claudia to make... whatever you said she was going to make first? I don't think it's a good idea to let Dawn near the mirror if we don't have to." Leena said with an apologetic look at Dawn.

Claudia saw Dawn sag. "It'll take me a few hours to make it." Claudia lied - it wasn't actually that hard for someone of her talents to make, not with artefacts to help - "And if it really is Myka in there, I'd rather not leave her there longer than necessary."

"I agree." Artie said "If that is Myka, then something evil is out with Pete hunting for an artefact. Which is something I'd rather curtail, before we've got another villain out there with their hands on artefacts."

"Alright." Leena said dubiously.

They went into Artie's office, where he and Claudia had laboriously moved the mirror from its usual place in storage.

Leena looked at the auras of Dawn and the mirror. As she had suspected, Dawn's green, ragged aura was mingling with the mirror's thick, dark red one. Unfortunately, Leena hadn't the faintest of ideas about what that meant. As far as she could tell, nothing was different from what Artie had described - Myka was standing in the mirror, and nothing in the room was reflected in it.

Dawn, on the other hand, _did_ see something different. She saw Myka, and standing next to Myka was herself.

Then, in a moment of stomach-wrenching vertigo, Dawn saw everything from the other side. She was in the mirror, and she could see herself outside it, her and Claudia and Leena and Artie.

But inside the mirror, right next to her, was Myka.

And, unlike everyone outside the mirror, Myka could see her.

"Hey, Myka." Dawn said, waving a hand shyly. "How's it going?"

Myka blinked. "Oh, okay. Just stuck in a mirror. You know, everyday stuff."

Dawn could dimly hear, as though through a thick pane of glass, Artie say "What did she say?"

"Are you really Myka? 'cause Artie says you might be some creepy evil thing that just looks like Myka." Dawn said, ignoring Artie.

"Do I look like something evil? Come on Dawn, you know it's me!" Myka protested.

"Yeah, but that's exactly what not-Myka would say too..." Dawn said suspiciously. "Tell me something only Myka would know."

Myka didn't say anything. She just took Dawn's hands and put one over Dawn's heart, and the other over her own. The same way she had when she had broken into Dawn's room whilst Dawn was having a schizophrenic episode.

Dawn nodded slowly. "Okay. Let's try and get you out of here, then."

Dawn continued holding Myka's hand, and walked steadfastly towards the Warehouse.

Suddenly, in another sickening moment of vertigo, she was back outside the mirror. But Myka wasn't, and Dawn's reflection was no longer showing in the mirror.

"What happened?" Leena asked, worried. She'd just seen the mirror's aura snap back, moving as far away from Dawn as it could get. Leena had never seen anything like that.

Dawn didn't answer. The mirror was beginning to annoy her now. It had let her in, and then it had pushed her out. Why wouldn't it let Myka go, too?

So Dawn walked up to the mirror, and much to Artie's consternation, thwacked it's frame as one might tap a puppy's nose if it had just peed on the carpet, and said in a disapproving tone "Bad artefact! Let Myka go!"

~*~

It was, Pete decided, the strangest thing he'd ever seen. And given that he'd spent the last few months working around artefacts, which was saying something.

He and Myka had been watching the couple that Artie suspected of having an artefact to see if they were doing anything strange (they weren't).

Then a hand reached out of an abandoned bottle of beer. It was recognizably Myka's hand, although how it could fit into the beer bottle was beyond Pete. Especially seeing as how both of Myka's hands were currently attached to Myka, and Myka was right next to him.

The hand groped around blindly as Pete watched in mute amazement, before it touched Myka, whereupon it promptly vanished. Myka tensed, looked around herself, and then relaxed when she saw Pete. "Hey Pete, do you have the Farnsworth? I want to call Artie."

Pete found his voice. "Sure, but why? What's going on?"

Myka smiled and then stretched luxuriously (which, given the tight black dress she was wearing, was incredibly distracting) then said "It's a long story. I'll tell you when we get home."

Pete handed her the Farnsworth.

~*~

Dawn looked around. She was back inside the mirror, only it seemed colder this time. Myka wasn't around, either. Hopefully the mirror had put her back in her body.

Dawn walked towards the Warehouse again.

Only, this time, she didn't end up back in her body. She just walked into a pane of glass.

Dawn banged her fists against it, yelling, as she watched something walk her body away. Something that wasn't her.

No one took any notice. No one even batted an eye, save for Leena who stared at the mirror as though it was a puzzle. Then she shrugged and followed the others.

Dawn shouted after her, but her voice dried up when she heard a childish, high-pitched giggle coming from behind her.

Apparently Dawn wasn't alone in there after all.


	22. Chapter 22

"Hello." said a childish, girly voice, just at the edge of Dawn's hearing. "You're new."

Dawn didn't answer. If she was trapped in the mirror (and she couldn't imagine that she was anywhere else) then there couldn't be anyone else in here with her. There hadn't been, when she'd been here with Myka.

"Oh, don't ignore me. They all do. They can't even see me, most of the time." the voice said again, drifting over to Dawn as though the speaker was a long way away.

But if Dawn was in the mirror by herself, then there couldn't be anyone speaking to her now. She was just having a schizophrenic episode. Admittedly, she'd never had this particular hallucination before, and she didn't have the crippling fear that her hallucination usually brought, but what else could it be?

"I know you can hear me. You go all stiff and tense when I speak. It's quite funny. It's not as though I can hurt you here. There's no substance here, just boredom." the voice said. This time, it was no longer playful but sad.

Dawn would prefer that she was hearing voices than that there actually was someone out there. She had gotten to grips with her delusions, she could deal with them (in a fashion). But this? She didn't know this.

And there was no one here with her. No one but the voice, which may or may not really be there. No Claudia. Nothing but her and her mind.

Dawn had come with Leena to the Warehouse so that she could be with people, so that she wouldn't be left alone with her thoughts and her fears. Instead, she'd ended up more isolated than she could ever be back at Leena's.

Oh, the irony.

The voice laughed, as though it had followed Dawn's thought process and found the irony funny. Dawn couldn't help but notice that there was more than a hint of insanity to the laugh. She recognized it from the wild, crazy laughter than sometimes slipped unbidden from her on lips when the Abomination withdrew.

~*~

Artie was pleased, because Myka had contacted him via the Farnsworth to assure him that she was back in her own body and ready to get back to tracking the artefact. Of course, Artie had to tell her what the artefact was, but that was a minor inconvenience. Whatever evil thing had been in Myka's body was gone now.

Artie went to talk to Dawn. Not only to thank her, but to find out what it was that she had actually done. She'd been rather unforthcoming on that front.

When Artie actually spoke to her, though, he was mildly surprised when she completely ignored his thanks, and instead just bluntly said "I fixed it."

Artie couldn't imagine why Dawn would be grumpy. She wasn't usually - when she wasn't shut away in her room either working on teleportation or hiding from everything outside her door, she was generally a pretty sunny person.

Grumpiness was his gig. It didn't suit a young girl who hadn't even hit 25 yet. It didn't make sense either, given that she had just done - well, Artie didn't precisely know what she'd done, but it had been good. There was no reason for it.

On the other hand, Artie's knowledge of young women was rather limited. There could be a dozen reasons for her behaviour. It could even be her schizophrenia presenting a new symptom - he knew it wasn't uncommon for schizophrenics to do poorly in social situations.

So Artie just let it go, and resolved to question Dawn about what she'd done another time. He'd ask her to write a report about it, but he doubted that that would ever happen.

Artie scratched his sling, and wondered if he was irritating as that when he was he was in one of his grumpy moods.

~*~

Claudia went to Dawn's side as soon as her friend came in. She knew that Dawn was generally a little delicate after one of her episodes, and Artie could certainly be abrasive.

"Hey Dawn. How're you doing?" Claudia asked, solicitously.

Dawn smiled. Not a little half-smile, like the ones she gave at Pete's antics. Not a bitter, twisted one that she wore far too often for Claudia's liking. But a genuine, wide, happy smile. Claudia instinctively smiled in return.

"I'm good, Claud. Really good." Dawn said happily.

Claudia fought not to sigh in relief. She knew that Dawn had been struggling under the weight of her (absolutely unnecessary) guilt at Artie stabbing. It was wonderful to see that she'd gotten over that.

"That's good." Claudia replied. "That's _great_!"

"I know." said Dawn, wrapping an arm around Claudia's shoulders. "It's good to know someone cares. That someone wants me to be happy."

Claudia found that that jarred a bit. She doubted that there was anyone who had actually met Dawn who didn't want her to be happy. But she cast the thought aside, because it was so long since Dawn had been happy.

~*~

Dawn could do with someone comforting her right then. Failing that, she could do with some warm clothes and a blanket, because being in a mirror was _cold_. Really, really cold.

"What's your name?" said the voice. She'd been asking that for - well, Dawn didn't actually know how long she'd been asking that. It could have been half an hour, or an entire the day. There was no way to tell.

Dawn could tell, though, that sooner or later she would answer. She would answer just to relieve the boredom, even if it meant that she went completely nuts and lost whatever fragment of her sanity she had left. Because this mind-numbing, incessant boredom would drive her mad just the same.

"What's your name?" the voice asked, yet again.

Dawn gave in, simply for something to do. "Dawn."

With a suddenness that took her breath away, a girl appeared in front of Dawn. She was freakishly pale (the word "ghostly" sprung to Dawn's mind, and she immediately wished that it hadn't) and with dark hair and dark, almost bruise-like shadows around her eyes. She was smiling, a smile with too many teeth in it. "Hello Dawn. I'm Alice."

Then the smile turned into something else. Dawn suddenly had a vivid empathy with how a mouse must feel when faced with a grinning cat. "Did you know that you can smell blood? It smells like metal." Alice's tone turned conspiratorial. "It smells _delicious_."

Great. Dawn was trapped, either with a psychopathic part of her own mind or a real life psychopath. Neither situation pleased.

~*~

Dawn, it appeared, was feeling good enough to go outside. She hadn't done that since Artie had been stabbed. Claudia would've gone with her, but Pete's laptop was on the fritz and he wanted her to fix it.

Leena dragooned Dawn into getting some supplies while she was out. After Leena's list of things they needed dragged on, Dawn began writing things down.

Claudia knew that Dawn wrote in a tight, cramped and nearly illegible scrawl. That said, Dawn didn't usually write right to left.

Claudia knew that Dawn knew a whole bunch of languages, and sometimes got a little confused. She'd once spoken in Turkish for about a minute before she noticed that no one had the faintest idea about what she was saying.

Still, for some reason, watching Dawn write set alarm bells off in her head. There wasn't really a logical reason for it, given that there certainly were languages that were written right to left. But it did.

Claudia resolved to keep a close eye on her friend.


	23. Chapter 23

Dawn didn't think that Alice was like her. Sure, there were times when she acted like a little girl, but then she actually _was_ a little girl. Most of the time, though, Alice was a bloodthirsty psychopath.

Unfortunately, Dawn didn't know if Alice had been like that before her life in the mirror, or if the mirror caused it. Dawn hoped it was the former, because ending up as someone who repeatedly daydreamed about beating people to death _and_ believing that she was a Key being sought by something known only as the Abomination would be simply too much to deal with.

Although, of course, Dawn wouldn't have a choice. She would have to deal with it. There was no substance here, just eternity in the cold and in the dark. There was no way out.

She couldn't even kill herself.

Not that Dawn was that desperate, not yet. She knew (hoped) that Claudia would figure out what had happened and rescue her somehow.

Until then, Dawn sat and stared through the mirror, trying to tune out the endless drivel that Alice constantly spouted. She suspected that Alice was just lonely and seeking any reprieve from the incessant boredom of the mirror, and if Dawn was honest, she felt more than a little sorry for the girl.

Still, Dawn couldn't help but wish that Alice would just _shut up_. She just went on and on. Dawn wouldn't mind it so much if Alice was capable of holding a conversation for more than a minute without threatening to do unspeakable things to her.

But as it was, Dawn only had her mind for company, and an irritating backdrop of Alice's violent litany.

Still, Dawn did have a particularly impressive mind. There was a lot she could do with it - admittedly, a fair bit of that consisted of brooding on her predicament, but she worked through numerous mathematical problems as well.

On the upside, she hadn't had a schizophrenic episode during her time in the mirror. Unfortunately, Dawn didn't actually know how long that had been. It felt like forever, but that didn't mean a thing.

It could've been half an hour. It could've been a year.

~*~

Claudia was beginning to wonder exactly why she had thought that it would be a good idea to keep an eye on Dawn.

Dawn wasn't acting weirdly. Well, actually, that wasn't true. She was acting weirdly - she was happy. She laughed at Pete's antics. She teased Artie. She played with Pete the ferret. She didn't lock herself away for hours at a time. She didn't look like she was about to burst out crying for no particular reason.

Claudia wondered if she might not be just a little put out because Dawn didn't seem to need her any more.

Claudia was the technology girl. If anyone needed anything of that sort done, they'd turn to her. And that was good - it made her feel needed, like she had a purpose. Like she'd felt when she was trying to free Joshua (between doubting her sanity and feeling guilty for leaving her brother stuck between dimensions for a dozen years).

The other thing that Claudia did, better than anyone else, was be there for Dawn. She'd been by Dawn's side in the psych hospital, had helped her through her lowest points. Had comforted her when Buffy had visited and told Dawn about her parent's divorce. Had made sure that Dawn knew that there was someone who cared for her through thick and thin.

Sure, Claudia knew that Dawn had been keeping things from her. Admittedly, that had mostly been about whether or not Dawn would decide to stay at the Warehouse or not, and given that Dawn had stayed Claudia was glad that Dawn had spared her all the angst that had gone into the decision.

Which was, Claudia knew, exactly why Dawn had acted the way she had.

But now, Dawn was doing well. Better than she'd ever done before. Better than she'd been even on her upswings. And Claudia didn't know how to deal with that. Didn't know how to cope with Dawn no longer needing a metaphorical shoulder to lean on.

Of course, Claudia didn't think about it like that. All she knew was that she felt slightly weird about Dawn being so upbeat, and more than slightly ashamed that she felt that way.

Still, it was weird, and it had happened immediately after Dawn had interacted with the mirror (in a way that she still hasn't satisfactorily explained) which, in Claudia's book, warranted scrutiny.

~*~

Dawn didn't know how long it was before she came to the conclusion that it was the worst torture in the entire universe for the mind of a scientist to exist without a body.

There was only so much one mind could do. Dawn had a good memory, but she couldn't recall everything. And when you spend every second thinking, there were a great deal of thoughts to forget. She couldn't write anything down. Worst of all, she couldn't implement anything that she thought about.

Having been a Physics student, there had always been a practical use to everything Dawn had learnt. It had been interesting, because she could see how things applied to the real world.

But there was no real world here. Just her thoughts, and Alice. Dawn was utterly, completely helpless. She literally couldn't do anything. And that was worse than failing to figure out how to make Joshua's equations work, worse than being stumped by artefact-less teleportation, worse even than worrying about her own existence. In each of those cases, she'd had something to hold on to. There had been something that she could do, even if that was only self-harm.

Here, there wasn't even that.

It was a while after that that Dawn noticed that she was getting increasingly frustrated. That her anger was just building, and building, and building.

It was no wonder Alice was crazy. Dawn hadn't been in the mirror for nearly as long, and already she felt the urge that, in a physical world, would lead to her throwing things around the room. It wasn't much of a step from there to violence.

Then Dawn snapped. It was Alice's fault - if she hadn't provided an outward expression for Dawn's mounting frustrations, it was likely that the anger would turn inward. Or just grow. Either of those wouldn't be pretty.

"Just shut up, will you?" Dawn yelled, her voice echoing weirdly in the void.

For the first time in a long while, Alice went silent.

"You just go on and on, like a barking dog." Dawn shouted. "And do you know what? You can't do a damn thing. Hell, _I_ can't do a damn thing either."

Then Dawn felt it. Something which she'd hoped wouldn't happen, not here. It was bad enough without that.

But, right then, Dawn didn't care. She was angry, and beneath that she was scared, although she'd never admit it. At least this was familiar.

"You know what can do something? The Abomination. Yeah, that shadow lurking right behind you. Can't you see it? I'd run, if I were you. It's looking for me, see. And it can actually do to you everything you've been threatening." Dawn said in a bright, brittle voice.

Alice turned slowly, as though she was afraid of what she might see. Then she ran off into the darkness. Dawn watched her go, still as a statue.

Then, when Alice was gone, Dawn broke down and begged the Abomination to get her out of here. To make this stop.

After that, Dawn pleaded with the Abomination to kill her.


	24. Chapter 24

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a paranoid person will always find a reason to justify their paranoia.

Not that Claudia was paranoid, exactly. She didn't think that there was anyone out to get her. No, it was more that she suspected that someone (or something) may have already gotten Dawn.

Claudia found a fair amount of things that seemed suspicious. The problem was, Dawn was always able to explain them away.

For example, the writing. It turned out that Dawn wasn't writing right to left because she was writing Hebrew or something like that. No, Dawn was writing mirror writing.

Which, given that Dawn had recently interacted with a mirror artefact (in a way that Dawn hadn't really ever explained), could mean that something related to Carroll's Looking Glass had been transferred to her and was affecting her somehow.

Right?

Except when Claudia had brought it up (circumspectly, of course, so that Dawn wouldn't be suspicious) it turned out that Dawn was writing that way because Da Vinci had, and she felt that emulating so great an innovator might give her a breakthrough on the teleportation.

This seemed reasonable. More than that, it seemed like something that Dawn would do. Moreover, she remembered Joshua doing the same thing for about a day, saying that it meant that his left-handedness wouldn't smudge his notes. He'd given up after it had given him a headache.

On the other hand, Claudia couldn't remember if Dawn had been left-handed before the incident with the mirror.

Then Claudia noticed that, over a period of several days, Dawn hadn't actually been working on teleportation. At all. Which was weird, because Dawn normally spent at least a couple of hours on it every day, even during her upswings. Probably even more than that, given that Dawn seemed to barely sleep.

Dawn's answer to this was that she was just spending some time with her friends and she would return with a fresh perspective. Which actually made some sense.

Except that then there was no reason for Dawn to use mirror writing.

Of course, the Warehouse being the Warehouse, there was always some crisis or other lurking around the corner, ready to interrupt the Warehouse agent's private lives.

So, when something actually happened, Claudia had to put aside her worries about Dawn.

~*~

Dawn wondered if you could get a cold, or even pneumonia, from being stuck in a mirror. She suspected not, given that she had yet to feel hunger despite having been there for what must surely have been days by now.

Not that Dawn wanted to be ill, of course. But it would've been a distraction. Not just a distraction from the endless boredom of life in a mirror, either.

But a distraction from the way the Dawn had acted, during her last schizophrenic episode.

Dawn had _never_ interacted with Abomination before. In fact, Dawn went out of her way to move as little as possible whilst the episode lasted.

This time, though, Dawn had talked to it. Pleaded with it, even. Begged it to kill her.

Dawn had promised Pete that she wouldn't commit suicide. She had kept that promise, hadn't even contemplated the possibility of breaking it. Dawn had repeatedly forced her thoughts away from that.

Now, it felt as though Dawn had given in. As though she'd broken down some kind of barrier. Before, she had only contemplated suicide as an extension of self-harm. Suicide had been something that she could control - perhaps the only aspect of her life that she could.

It wasn't just that, of course. She also wanted everything to stop. Dawn had wanted not to be stuck between - between the Warehouse and LA, between insanity and sanity, between existence and non-existence. If she died, then she would be unarguably dead. That would be all.

But this hadn't been Dawn thinking about suicide as means to regain control of her life, or to make the only choice she felt she could make. Dawn had pleaded for death from an outside source. It wasn't suicide. She had placed her life in the hands of someone else (admittedly, someone who hadn't actually been there) because she couldn't deal with it herself.

Dawn hadn't begged to be killed because she physically couldn't do it herself, although that was certainly part of it. She had done it because she had lost any control over her life that she had ever had, no matter how tenuous. She was helpless.

Dawn had lost control, which was the last thing that she had to hold onto.

Dawn had nothing left.

~*~

Artie convened a meeting at Leena's, and he even asked Dawn and Claudia to sit in. Which probably meant that he had something important to say.

Either that, or he was just tired of having the pair listen in anyway.

"Do you remember Radburn?" Artie asked without preamble once everyone was assembled.

"The guy who was after the Lenape artefacts?" Myka replied.

"Yes, him." Artie acknowledged. "As you know, he was placed in a maximum security prison after being charged with murder and attempted murder, amongst a few other things."

"You're going to tell us that he broke out, aren't you?" Pete said.

"I'm afraid so. Five days ago." Artie answered.

Pete said "How?" at the same time as Myka demanded "Why didn't you tell us before?"

Artie snorted indelicately. "Myka, I'm telling you now. And if you remember, five days ago you were stuck in a mirror while a dangerous murderer paraded around in your body. Pardon me, but telling you didn't really seem high on my list of priorities at the time."

Myka looked like she wanted to say something, but she subsided. Artie continued. "And Pete, we don't know how he broke out. The security footage shows Radburn in his cell one moment and gone the next. I haven't been able to tell whether the footage has been doctored or if an artefact was used. It could even be both."

"Does Radburn even know about artefacts?" Pete mused "I mean, I know he knew about the Lenape ones, but that doesn't mean that he knows there are others out there."

Artie nodded. "Good point. Which is why I've spent the last five days going through everything related to Radburn that I can find. I haven't found so much as a hint that he knew there are other artefacts out there."

Myka steepled her fingers. "So who broke him out?"

"_Exactly_. After Radburn was arrested, his company fell apart, and all his employees started scrambling to disassociate themselves from a murderer. So it doesn't look like it was one of them." Artie answered.

"It was MacPherson, wasn't it? Radburn was a rich dude, he's bound to have money salted away. Contacts too, probably. He'd be an ideal partner for MacPherson." Claudia said. She sighed inwardly - she had tried tracking MacPherson since the incident with the Honjo Masamune, but finding someone who doesn't want to be found when you don't have any idea what they look like is an almost impossible task. Especially seeing as how Claudia had had to hide what she was doing from Artie, to stop him from freaking out.

"I expect so, yes." Artie said.

"Great. So now we've got two homicidal artefact hunters out there, doing their best to undo everything the Warehouse has ever done." Pete grumbled.

Artie held up a finger. "It's not all bad news. Over the past several days, I've managed to narrow down MacPherson's location to two places, Montreal and Berlin."

"Hey Mykes, you want to split up and search for clues?" Pete asked, grinning. Myka smiled back.

"Yes, that's what I want you to do. Myka, you go to Berlin, Pete can take Montreal. Be careful, though - MacPherson will probably have artefacts on him. Look out for Radburn, too, I suspect he'll be with MacPherson." Artie said.

~*~

"I thought you might be a nice person." Alice said tremulously. Dawn turned away from the window into the Warehouse and saw that Alice was back, lurking just on the edge of sight. Dawn wondered exactly how far the dark coldness went on for. Maybe it never ended (and wouldn't that be a perfect example of pathetic fallacy?).

Dawn weighed Alice's words for longer than she really needed to. "Yeah, I can be a nice person. I used to be a nice person, up until a few months ago. Then I realised that I might not be a person at all. As you might guess, that tends to make someone more than a little unhappy."

"You've got the wrong name, then. Dawn is a happy name, for bright shiny people." Alice said.

Dawn smiled bitterly. "Haven't you ever heard that it's darkest before the dawn?"

"Yes. But it isn't, really. It's quite light." Alice said.

"I've spent months thinking that I might be a ball of energy made into a human to protect me from something. Even though it sounds crazy, I can't get it out of my head. I've thought about committing suicide. Trust me, there's no light left." Dawn said.

"Sorrow is a dead feeling. It crushes the life out of you. I much prefer rage." Alice said, mouth curling in an approximation of a smile. "You should try it too."

Then Alice frowned. "Except... you already did. You shouted at me. Threatened me with the Abomination."

"Sorry." Dawn said, voice cracking.

"Sorry? Don't be _sorry_. Never be _sorry_. There's no point. Being apologetic never got anyone anywhere." Alice said.

Dawn opened her mouth to say something, but she shut it again, as she realised that Alice actually had a point. Being sorry for herself had never gotten Dawn anywhere except the brink of suicide.

Dawn had already felt the mounting frustration that came from being trapped. If she just let it build, and fed everything into it - her fears, her delusions, everything...

Well, Dawn didn't actually know what would happen. But she had nothing but time in which to find out.


	25. Chapter 25

Author's note: unlike Dawn, I _have_ put some research into anger. Everything in this chapter is true, albeit somewhat simplified.

It is also true that schizophrenics do not, in general, experience prolonged periods of mania. That is one of the ways to differentiate between bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, because schizophrenics are usually depressive whereas bipolar people alternate between mania and depression. Dawn has the rapid speech, flitting thoughts and general restlessness of mania, though.

But I digress. On with the reading! (And the reviewing and the recommending...)

~*~

Dawn had never put a great deal of research into the workings of the human mind. She was, at heart, a scientist, someone who studied the workings of the world around her. It made more sense to her than what happens in people's brains, which often had no explanation.

She had, of course, found out as much as she could about what could possibly make her think the things she did. But that had led Dawn to investigate schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and other mental afflictions of that ilk. Dawn hadn't put any effort into learning how anger affected someone's thought processes.

Dawn could tell you about the history and mythology of anger - that the Greek goddess Lyssa was the embodiment of the kind of anger associated with rabies, and, ironically, mania as well. Unlike most schizophrenics, whose moods tended towards depressive, Dawn was more symptomatic of the manic episodes of bipolar disorder. It was that which so often left Dawn unable to sleep.

Dawn could tell you that Wrath, one of Christianity's Seven Deadly Sins, was the only one that wasn't directed inwards. While you could, of course, be angry at yourself, people were far more likely to direct their anger onto something outside themselves. Whereas Sloth, for example, could never be projected outwards.

Dawn found that it was only a short step from the racing thoughts and rapid speech that were symptoms of her mania to a deep, abiding anger. Not an anger at anything in particular, just a general, diffuse kind of rage. Unlike the melancholy thoughts that Dawn frequently suffered, or the guilt that she heaped upon herself, this anger wasn't directed at her. It was rather refreshing, actually.

Dawn didn't know that people with an angry temperament were usually more optimistic than more timid people. Angry people were also generally respected more and treated as authority figures. But had Dawn known this, it wouldn't have changed anything. It might even set her more firmly on her course. Optimism was good - definitely better than the bitter cynicism that she was usually plagued with. And if it made her more outgoing as well, so much the better. Dawn had wanted to learn to trust people other than Claudia and Buffy - like the tentative trust that she had come to feel for Myka, after Myka had broken into her room and calmed her down.

Dawn chose her path.

~*~

Claudia discovered that, while chasing after a dangerous man such as MacPherson, it was important to remember that he would also go after you.

And your family.

Myka, unfortunately, discovered that too late. MacPherson had sent her father an artefact, a dangerous journal that was slowly killing him - unless Pete and Myka could find the other half of the artefact. It turned out that artefacts could come in two distinct but linked objects. Artie called them bifurcated artefacts. This particular pair consisted of Edgar Allan Poe's pen and his notebook.

Claudia was ridiculously relieved that Joshua was safe in Geneva. Not even MacPherson could get to him at CERN.

While simultaneously feeling this relief and hoping that Myka's father would be alright, Claudia began to wonder something.

Myka's father ran a bookshop. That wasn't the kind of occupation that someone would choose unless they had a strong affection for the written word. MacPherson had sent him an artefact book. The book had reacted to him.

Claudia knew that artefacts could be choosy about who could use them. Most could be used by anyone, but there were some that could only be used by people of a certain nature. Like bibliophiles.

That implied that artefacts had some kind of sentience.

Dawn, however, had an aura that reacted oddly to artefacts, making them react in unforeseen ways. Just like she had reacted to the mirror.

Claudia imagined it like an equation. Dawn + semi-sentient artefact =?

It had seemed as though the extent of the mirror's reaction to Dawn had been to put Myka back in her body and trap Alice Liddell again. But what if it hadn't? What if something else had happened too?

If something went into the mirror, something had to come out. Which was why Myka and Alice had swapped places.

Claudia didn't know, of course, that Dawn had also seen herself reflected in the mirror. No one else had. But it made sense. If Myka, Alice and Dawn were the only parts of the equation, then it seemed illogical that one part (Dawn) would be unchanged.

But if Claudia added the artefact into the mix, taking into account its semi-sentient nature...

Alice and Myka had swapped. That was simple enough. Which left Dawn and the mirror.

Dawn's aura, according to Leena, could make artefacts react in ways that they weren't supposed to. For example, instead of swapping something inside the mirror for something outside, it could be that someone outside the mirror (Dawn) had swapped with _the mirror itself_.

It was just a hunch, of course. But it explained why Claudia had felt as though there was something off about Dawn for the past few days. It explained the mirror writing, too.

Claudia couldn't tell Dawn. If she was right, and Dawn wasn't Dawn, then there was no telling how she might react. And if Claudia was wrong, Dawn would doubtlessly take it as further confirmation of her lack of existence, which could potentially be just as bad.

Claudia wanted to share her hunch with someone, though. Unfortunately, with Myka in Colorado with her father, Pete off hunting for Poe's pen, Artie brooding about MacPherson and Leena trying to stop him from doing so, Claudia could tell that she'd just be in the way.

What Claudia really needed to do was find a way to prove the hunch. Fortunately, she thought that she knew a way to do just that.

~*~

The problem with hunches is that it is impossible to see how they'll turn out. There was every chance that Claudia's hunch was wrong, and attempting to act on it might make everything worse. There was simply no way to tell.

Except, of course, that there was. The Warehouse was simply full of artefacts that could be useful in this situation, but Claudia was thinking of one in particular. The Jubilee Grand Casino chip allowed the user to see glimpses into the future. Ironically, it was the very same artefact that Alice had tried to steal before being returned to the mirror.

So, while everyone else was busy with the latest crisis, Claudia went to go and find it.


	26. Chapter 26

Dawn wasn't doing anything when Claudia went to see her. Literally nothing. She was perched on the edge of her bed, staring at nothing. Claudia wondered if she was even thinking - maybe the reason Dawn had tried to be with people as much as possible was because the mirror needed people around to function. All artefacts needed a human component to work - there was no reason to assume that one that was currently human itself was any different.

She perked up the moment Claudia came into the room, though. "Hey, Claud! Has Pete gotten Poe's pen yet?"

Claudia shrugged uncomfortably, and was acutely aware that the real Dawn would know that there was something behind the gesture. But this Dawn didn't react at all. "Don't know. Listen, Dawn, there's something I want to show you. It's in the Warehouse."

Dawn tilted her head questioningly, in a movement so like Dawn it hurt. If the casino chip hadn't shown Claudia... what it had shown, Claudia would be tempted to believe that she'd gotten it all wrong. "Is that okay? I mean, did Artie say its okay? I thought I wasn't supposed to go in the Warehouse."

Claudia shoved her hands into her pockets, wincing from the pain that was a side effect of using the casino chip, so that Dawn couldn't see her pushing her thumb against her fingers. She didn't know how much of Dawn remained, but given that the real Dawn knew exactly why Claudia made that gesture it was better not to show it. "Yeah, it's fine. You coming?"

Dawn sat perfectly still for a moment before shrugging and saying "Sure."

~*~

Claudia didn't know how much Dawn suspected. She hoped that she didn't expect anything, but she couldn't tell. She knew Dawn better than anyone, but this wasn't Dawn, no matter how much she might look the same. Oh, the mannerisms were there (fake-Dawn even chewed her hair) but Claudia couldn't tell whether they meant the same thing as they did when real-Dawn made them.

Still, it didn't matter a great deal. The casino chip had shown the real Dawn, which meant that Claudia would succeed.

On the other hand, given that only Dawn had been in the vision, Claudia didn't know whether someone else was hurt as a result.

~*~

Claudia took Dawn to the Dark Vault as quickly as possible, rushing so that there was as little opportunity as possible for an artefact to react to fake-Dawn's aura. That would just make everything more complicated, and, if Dawn reacted to the artefacts locked away in the vault, potentially extremely dangerous.

She couldn't help it, but with every step closer to the Vault Claudia found that she was getting ever tenser. She also noticed that Dawn wasn't.

Claudia almost jumped out of her skin when Dawn suddenly stopped and said "I know what you're doing, you know. You don't have to be so secretive."

Claudia swallowed. "You - you do?"

Dawn spread her hands. "Sure. It's obvious. You want your friend back. Quite understandable, really." She smiled.

"Oh." Claudia replied. She didn't know what else to say.

The smile dropped from Dawn's face. "Only, you don't know what it's like. That - that little _human_ crawling around inside me, polluting me with its fear and rage and boredom. Such a horrific concept, boredom. Do you know, I never knew what it was like to be bored before those Warehouse agents stuffed that girl into me?"

"Oh." Claudia said again. There wasn't anything else to say.

"Dawn was - she's a holiday, I suppose you'd call it." Dawn said wistfully. "But, if it's over, it's over. I'm not going to fight you."

"You're not?" Claudia said, surprised. "But what about all that stuff you just said?"

"Oh, I don't _want_ to go back. But I know how you feel about your friend. How the others do, too. I've never felt anything like that, before. The girl can't feel anything like that. She's damaged, that one." Dawn said, sighing. "Anyway, I don't want to destroy that emotion."

Claudia decided not to protest the fact that the mirror had called Alice "damaged". Having been a mental patient, she took offence at that kind of thing, but she guessed that now wouldn't be the best time to make a big issue about it. Not when her best friend was possessed by an empathetic mirror.

And just like that, Claudia had a solution. One that would make the mirror happy (as far as such a thing could be called happy).

The mirror had been stuck with a murderer for its entire "life". Then it had been shut away in the Warehouse, far away from anyone - and more important, far away from anyone's emotions. No wonder it had jumped at the chance to take a holiday in Dawn's body.

"I'll visit you." Claudia said impulsively, before she had time to reconsider. "You can read my emotions, or whatever it is that you do. You won't be alone. You won't have just Alice for company."

An expression appeared on Dawn's face, one that Claudia had seen before - when Claudia had hugged her after Buffy had visited her in the psych hospital to tell Dawn that their parents were being divorced. The expression of surprise that someone would comfort her. Seeing it now, on Dawn's face but knowing it wasn't really Dawn, was more painful than Claudia could bear. Even as Claudia looked away, a lump in her throat, she knew she was doing the right thing.

"You'd do that?" fake-Dawn said, surprised. "Why?"

Claudia shrugged awkwardly. "I care for people. It's what I do. Even if they're, you know, artefacts."

Fake-Dawn stretched out a hand and clasped Claudia's. "Thank you."

~*~

It wasn't long after that that the pair stood in front of the mirror. Claudia had brought a camera with an over-powerful flash that she'd rigged up, but it turned out that she didn't need it.

Fake-Dawn just laid a hand on the mirror's frame, froze for several seconds, and then backed away.

She was Dawn, now. Claudia could see it. She waited expectantly for Dawn to say something.

Dawn didn't. She looked around, eyes drinking in everything that she saw. She stretched and ran her fingers through her hair, luxuriating in the tactile sensation after so long without it.

Then, eventually, without looking at Claudia, she said "How long?". Dawn's voice was harsh and cracked the first time, so she cleared her throat and repeated herself.

"About a week."

Dawn nodded once, birdlike. Then, without another word, she set off, heading out of the Warehouse. Claudia nearly had to run to keep up with her.

~*~

Naturally, given Claudia's luck, the pair were accosted by Artie just as they were about to leave the Warehouse. Claudia didn't really want to explain to him that for the last week, Dawn literally hadn't been herself. She thought that, if Artie knew that Dawn could react to artefacts like that, he'd be sure to send her away.

"What are you two doing here?" Artie asked brusquely, but he continued talking before either of them could say anything. "Never mind that. Pete and Myka are back. They've got something to tell us. Something bad, by the sound of it."

Dawn looked at Claudia for the first time, her expression clearly asking "What's going on?"

Unfortunately, Claudia couldn't tell her, not with Artie right there. Fake-Dawn had known about the crisis with Myka's parents and Poe's pen, so the real Dawn would have to pretend that she did, too.

~*~

Artie was right. It was bad news. It turned out that MacPherson had engineered the entire situation with Poe's notebook and Myka's father so that he didn't have to make the effort of recovering Poe's pen and notebook himself.

Of course, Dawn hadn't the faintest idea of what Poe's pen did, or what the situation with Myka's father was. So Claudia decided to clue her friend in - as much as she could in the present circumstances. "Oh, great. So MacPherson's got an artefact that allows whatever he writes to come true. As if having an absurdly sharp sword wasn't enough."

At that, Dawn stood up so quickly that her chair fell over backwards. Dawn left the room almost before it hit the floor.

There was a moment of silence before Myka said. "Damn. She seemed to be doing so well lately."

That statement almost made Claudia cry. "I, uh, I'd better see if she's alright."

"Are you sure that's a good idea? You know how she gets. She might just need some space." Pete said gently.

"No, it's - it's not like that. It's important. I have to see her." Claudia said thickly. She left before anyone could convince her that it might not be the best of ideas.

~*~

Claudia didn't bother to knock on Dawn's door. She knew full well that Dawn wouldn't answer. So she just went in.

She was somewhat surprised to see Dawn was taking all her clothes out of her wardrobe and was piling them into a heap on the floor. "What are you doing, Dawn?" Claudia asked cautiously.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Dawn said so quickly that she began speaking almost before Claudia stopped. "Or do you need a week to figure it out?"

"Okay. I can see what you're doing. But _why_ are you doing it?" Claudia asked in what she hoped was a conciliatory tone.

Dawn closed the distance between her and Claudia so quickly that it almost seemed as though she didn't move through the intervening space. She stood so close to Claudia that Dawn's face filled her entire field of vision.

"Because that - that _thing_ wore my clothes. It's everywhere. In my bed, in my life. It took everything. It even took you. I don't want my clothes, I don't want my bed. They're not mine. It took you a week to get me. And it turns out, while I was gone, you lost an artefact that could help me. Imagine that. I'd only have to write four letters. And now it's gone. So you can get out." Dawn said in a soft voice, with no particular intonation.

This is what Claudia had seen, thanks to the casino chip. What she'd seen the first time, and the second time, when she'd used it again hoping to see something different, and the third time, out of a kind of morbid fascination. Claudia had kept on watching it until the pain from the chip's burns was too much for her to bear.

Now that it was real, Claudia didn't feel the sense of sickening abandonment that she'd felt every time the chip had shown her this scene.

Dawn and Claudia didn't argue. The closest they'd ever come was when Dawn had refused to leave the psych hospital to help Claudia to save Joshua. Although that had ended with Claudia trying to hang herself, it hadn't been argument. Claudia had realised the hopelessness of her predicament when even a schizophrenic girl who was the closest thing she had to family refused to help.

This situation was different. This was an actual argument.

Claudia, to her surprise, felt angry.

"Do you know what, Dawn? You can go to hell." Claudia said coldly.

Dawn took a step backwards in surprise. "What did you say?"

"I don't think I've ever met someone as selfish as you. You've got people who care for you. People who care. And you shut us out, lock yourself up here. I should've known you'd push me away sooner or later. You tried to before. Well, Dawn, maybe someday you'll realise that we're here for you. Maybe you'll eventually realise that shutting us out is a bad move."

Dawn began chewing her hair. "You're there for me? _Really?_ So you were there when I was trapped in the cold and the dark with a psychopath, then. You were there when I begged the Abomination to kill me, because I had no other options. You were there when I was cutting myself. You were there when I was literally going out of my mind trying to decide whether I should I stay or not. You were there for all that, were you?" Dawn said conversationally. The casual tone only made everything worse.

"Dawn-"

"Because you did an amazing job, if you were. See, if you were there, you must've maneuvered me so that I thought that it was me trying to deal with all of that. By myself. But you were there helping, were you? Funny, I never noticed you." Dawn said, sarcasm dripping from every word.

Claudia had known that Dawn was struggling. She'd seen it. But she hadn't done anything about it, because she didn't know how. Claudia didn't see how she could help Dawn, if Dawn wouldn't tell her what was wrong. Claudia was barely nineteen, she didn't know how to broach the topic with her friend. She had no experience with that kind of thing. She could only help Dawn if Dawn sought her help.

"Dawn-"

"I've had enough of your help. Get out."

"Dawn-"

"_Get out get out get out!_" Dawn screamed.

Claudia flinched, and left. She didn't turn back, even when Dawn smashed her window and threw all her clothes out of it. She just walked to her room, shut the door, sank down to the floor and began to cry.

Meanwhile, Dawn found a pen and began to scrawl calculations on her wall. She didn't stop when her eyes began to well up. She just blinked her tears away.


	27. Chapter 27

Artie was pretty surprised when Dawn showed up in his office. During the past few days, since her fight with Claudia, Dawn had only left her room during the middle of the night or ridiculously early in the morning, while everyone else was asleep. This was the first time Artie (or anyone) had seen her, because Claudia had insisted that Dawn be left in peace. And then steadfastly refused to mention her again.

"Hey, Artie. I need some money." Dawn said, as though she hadn't isolated herself from human contact for days.

"What for?" Artie asked warily.

"So I can fund my capitalist corporation that'll be my front for world domination."

Artie blinked. "Really?"

Dawn rolled her eyes. "No, Artie. I need money to buy things. I was joking about the world domination. Couldn't you tell?"

"No, Dawn, I can't tell when you're joking. You often come in here and talk about something silly, but you sound serious. Sometimes you actually _are_ serious." Artie said.

Dawn tilted her head. "Like when?"

"Oh, that time a couple of weeks ago when you gravely informed me that cheap is an anagram of peach. And before that, when you suggested that if we sell Leena's cookies we could become millionaires. You were upset when I didn't take you seriously about the cookie plan." Artie said calmly.

Dawn shrugged. "Okay, you might have a point there. But the fact remains that I need money."

"What kind of things do you want to buy?"

"Food. Wire. Resistors. A Van de Graaff generator. Clothes. That kind of thing. Because, you know, you don't actually pay me." Dawn said, listing things on her fingers.

"Claudia doesn't seem to have any trouble paying for the things she uses to make her innumerable gadgets." Artie grumbled.

"Yeah, but that's because she sneaks off to Vegas when she needs money. I don't really think it would be a good idea if I did that."

"I thought she was joking about that." Artie said in surprise.

"Maybe your eyebrows are crushing the part of your brain that allows you to understand young girls." Dawn said, smiling.

Artie rubbed an eyebrow absently. "I'll have to talk to her about that. But I'll give you an allowance, if you really need one."

Dawn's smile widened. "Thanks, Artie!" she said before scampering out.

Artie sighed, and made a note to have a look at whatever Dawn building when she next emerged.

~*~

Joshua was surprised when Dawn called him. She'd never done it before. It was weird, because Claudia had mentioned in a recent call that she and Dawn had had a falling out, and Dawn had shut herself in her room. She hadn't said anything more than that, and Joshua hadn't pressed her - he had come to realise that Claudia and Dawn's relationship was a delicate issue.

But Dawn seemed the same as she had before he'd left for Switzerland. Admittedly, she didn't mention Claudia, and seemed content on catching up on events in Joshua's life rather than talking about her own. Joshua was happy to talk to her - as smart as Claudia was, she wasn't a physicist. He couldn't really explain his work to her. But Dawn understood what he was doing.

At the end of their conversation, Dawn asked, quite out of the blue, whether he still had the key to his laboratory at Caltech. Joshua replied that he did - he hadn't been able to bring himself to get rid of it.

"But doesn't Claudia have one?" he asked.

There was a pause, which Joshua put down to Dawn feeling uncomfortable at the mention of Claudia. Then she said "Not anymore. She threw it away after she got you back - too many bad memories, you know?"

Joshua did know. It was he still had his, to remind himself to be careful and not to rush his way through experiments. "What do you need it for, anyway?"

"I'm finally getting somewhere with artefact-less teleportation, but Artie won't give me any money to buy equipment so I can't test my formula. I was hoping I could cannibalize some of your equipment."

"Dawn, you know teleportation dangerous. I'm not surprised Artie won't let you experiment with it." Joshua said warningly.

"Relax. I don't rush into things unless I'm sure it'll work. I spent a week before I even wrote down my breakthrough, because I don't want to be hasty. I'll even show you the formula, if you like."

"Sure, I'd like that." Joshua said warmly. "But I won't send you my key until you send me your formula."

Dawn began chewing her hair. "Actually, we're heading over to Geneva on an artefact hunt in a couple of days. Apparently some art collector has a painting that eats people. Anyway, we could get lunch or something, if you like."

Joshua thought carefully for a moment, trying to figure out how to phrase his question without giving offence. "Uh, you're allowed to go after artefacts, are you?"

"Generally, no. But Cl- your sister's grounded - its a long story - and Artie says this is a four person job, so..." Dawn said, in a too-bright voice. Joshua couldn't tell if that was because he'd obliquely mentioned her schizophrenia or because Dawn had had to mention Claudia (even if she couldn't bring herself to say her name).

"Alright. What time?" Joshua asked, changing the subject.

"Doesn't bother me." Dawn said nonchalantly. "You can pick the place, too. I'm sure you know all the best restaurants."

Joshua smiled. "Actually, I know this great little place..."

~*~

Dawn met Joshua at a little cafe a few days later. Dawn explained that Myka, Artie and Pete had had to get the painting to the Warehouse as fast as possible, before it ate someone else. She told him that Claudia couldn't come because she'd nearly gotten herself killed using Volta's lab coat to change a light bulb, and Artie had grounded her as punishment. Dawn seemed genuinely sad that Claudia couldn't be there, so Joshua guessed that the pair must've gotten over their fight.

After that, Dawn produced a sheet of paper covered in equations. Joshua could tell that Dawn had put some effort into making it legible, but her cramped, spiky handwriting still made it almost unreadable. Still, from what Joshua could glean, it seems promising. Certainly worth testing, although he stressed that Dawn shouldn't test it on herself.

Dawn nodded, lips curved in a half-smile. "Of course I won't."

"In that case" Joshua said, putting on a mock-solemn expression "may I present to you the key to the great kingdom of Donovan's Lab, in the land of Caltech?"

Dawn struggled to match his composure. Eventually, she managed to incline her head graciously and say "You may."

Then she burst out laughing. Joshua joined in.

Then they talked about nothing much, just the amiable chatting of friends who hadn't seen each other in a long while. Dawn even flirted a bit, although not very well. Joshua didn't even notice.

But really, who else was she ever going to get the chance to flirt with?

After a while, Dawn said she had to go and catch her flight, and she'd tell Claudia that he said hello. They said goodbye.

Upon returning to work, Joshua was immediately embroiled in an important project. As a result, he missed the next few calls from his sister, and it was days before he had a chance to realise that the sheet of paper Dawn gave him didn't have the entire equation on it. It had a substantial chunk missing, and wouldn't work without it.

At that point, Joshua discovered that an abandoned building in Geneva had exploded shortly after Dawn's visit. Experts thought that some kind of machinery found in the basement was the cause. Unfortunately, the explosion had almost completely destroyed whatever type of machine had been down there.

~*~

Later that day, Dawn walked into the reception area of Grey's Psychiatric Hospital and booked an appointment with Dr Greene.


	28. Chapter 28

"Hello, Dawn. It's been, what, four months since I last saw you?" Greene said pleasantly.

"That long?" Dawn said, mostly to herself. "I suppose it has, at that."

"You know that it's more usual to have an appointment every six months. Unless, of course, there's something you wanted to talk about?"

Dawn absently twirled her hair around a finger. "I, uh, kind of stopped taking my meds about a week and a half ago."

Greene sighed heavily. "Dawn, you _know_ that you need to keep up with your medication."

"Yeah, I know, Doc, but something came up." Dawn said. "It wasn't really my fault."

Greene decided to ask her what had happened later. "Have you been having any withdrawal symptoms? Or an exacerbation of your schizophrenic symptoms?"

Dawn shook her head. Given that she'd technically been incorporeal for most of that period, she'd just jumped straight past the withdrawal symptoms. She had no idea whether the mirror had gotten them, or negated them somehow. "Actually, I had a hallucination a few days ago. It was the same kind of hallucination, with the - well, you know, you've got my records. Except I, uh, kind of asked it to kill me..."

"I see. Had you been having suicidal thoughts before that, or has that started since you stopped taking your medication?" Greene asked.

"Oh, it's not new." Dawn said, rushing through the words as though getting them out in the open would mean that she wouldn't feel them anymore. "I've thought about it quite a bit, actually."

"I see." Greene repeated. "You were taking Invega, were you not?"

"Yeah."

"Well, before you checked out here, I had been giving some serious thought to changing your medication to Clozaril. It's generally found to be more effective than Invenga when dealing with resistant schizophrenia, and, if I might be frank, it doesn't seem as though anything is shifting yours. Would that be accurate?"

Well, given that being stuck in a mirror hadn't been enough to stop Dawn hallucinating, it was safe to say that nothing earthly would have an effect. But still, Dawn lived in hope. She had to. "Yeah, that's right."

"The fact is that, while Clozaril is more effective than Invenga, it also has more side effects."

"Really? 'cause the other stuff made me drool a lot, and I'm pretty sure it made me insomniac."

"Those are, as antipsychotic side effects go, relatively minor. Clozapine, the active ingredient of Clozaril, has been known to cause heart problems, especially in large quantities. Admittedly, only in a small percentage of cases, but still. It also has the chance to cause agranulocytosis."

"Doctor, I'm a physicist, not a doctor. I don't know what... whatever you just said is."

"Agranulocytosis is - well, essentially there is a chance that Clozaril can strip your bone marrow, meaning that your white blood cell count will drop, leaving your body open to infections." Greene explained.

"Uh huh." Dawn mused, chewing her hair. "But do you think it will help?"

"There is every chance that it will." Greene said optimistically.

"Doc, that's just about the most evasive answer I've ever heard. It's not like I'm dying of anything. Just tell me straight out. What are the odds?" Dawn snapped.

"Honestly, I don't know. It is an effective drug, but we still know so little about what causes schizophrenia. And your particular case has proven to be curiously resistant. It might help. It might not. But I think that there's a better chance of this working than keeping you on Invenga. It's your choice, though."

"Well, what can I say? If there's a chance of it helping, I'm there like a shot." Dawn said.

Greene smiled at her. "That's good. Now, we'll have to talk about the side effects. You'll also have to have a weekly blood test, to check your white blood cell count..."

~*~

The following morning, Claudia was surprised to see Dawn sleeping in a chair outside her room, with Pete the ferret asleep on her lap. Claudia remembered the last time Dawn had been outside her room like that - it had been just after they'd first arrived at the Warehouse.

Claudia rather suspected that Dawn was there to apologise about what she'd said during their fight, but, if Claudia was honest, she didn't want to hear it. Not because she didn't want to make up with her friend - she did - but because Dawn wasn't the only one who'd said some hurtful things.

After all, it hadn't been Dawn who'd said Claudia could go to hell. Or called Claudia selfish. No, Claudia had said that. She'd said that to the person who had travelled half way across the United States to stay with her. And she didn't even the excuse of having been stuck with a psychopath for a week, or schizophrenia.

Claudia didn't want to hear Dawn apologise, because then she would have to face up to things that she had said. And she didn't want to do that. She just wanted to forget that they'd ever happened.

So, Claudia walked down the corridor and left her friend sleeping in her chair.

That is, until Dawn called after her. "I can hear you, you know. It's kind of hard to avoid someone camped outside your room."

Claudia flushed slightly and turned back. "I thought you were asleep." she mumbled.

"Sleeping isn't really one of my strong points, Claud. But you know that."

Claudia shrugged awkwardly. "I guess."

"Anyway, I wanted to tell you that peach is an anagram of cheap." Dawn said cheerfully, rubbing Pete's head.

"You camped outside my room to tell me that?" Claudia said, amazed. Not that Dawn had done it - it was exactly the kind of thing that Dawn would do - but that Dawn wasn't actually going to mention their fight.

"Um, actually, no. I wanted to apologise to you about what I said the other day. And my behaviour since then. And the fact that I stole your shampoo."

"I wondered who did that! I thought it was Myka, but she just said I was being paranoid!" Claudia exclaimed.

"Yeah, sorry about that. I ran out of mine." Dawn said, blushing.

Claudia waved a hand negligently. "Meh, it doesn't matter. I can always get some more."

"So, uh, are we good?" Dawn said in a tiny voice.

Claudia wanted nothing more than to say yes, and go on with her life as though the fight hadn't been anything other than a bump in the road. But she couldn't. She couldn't just forget the things she had said.

"Dawn, how can you just sit there and ask if we're okay? After everything I said? Honestly, I'm kind of surprised you didn't just take for the hills right there and then."

Dawn stood, dumping Pete unceremoniously on the floor. "Because I love you, Claud. Oh, don't look at me like that, I don't meant that way, I mean in an entirely platonic way - oh, this sentence has really gotten away from me. Do you mind if I start again?"

"Okay." Claudia replied, stunned.

"Claudia, one of the main reasons I'm not currently in a psychiatric hospital in Los Angeles is because of you. Because you asked me to stay with you and cope with the outrageous things. And because I didn't really cope with the outrageous things by myself anyway. You were right, I was selfish. I just kept my problems to myself, and struggled, and I didn't even spare a thought to think that you might be having troubles to. I had my problems, and they swallowed me. I didn't even notice that there was someone who wanted to help. Claud, I have a whole bundle of problems. I didn't want to subject you to them. I still don't. But, given that it seems as though my problems are eating me alive, it looks like sharing them is the best option. Because bottling things up seems to be making me going even crazier and also seems to be ruining our friendship. And I'm going to stop talking now, because I need to breathe and I'm pretty sure that this has gotten away from me too."

Claudia stood still for a long moment, watching Dawn as she took in a deep breath. Then she said "I'm going to hug you in a second. I want you to know that it's an entirely platonic hug, so don't go getting any ideas, okay?"

Dawn scowled. "You're never going to let me forget I said that, are you?"

"Oh, no. It was ridiculously cute." Claudia said smiling widely.

Dawn stuck out her tongue. "Doornovan."

"Ah! Artie told you!"

"He might have let it slip."

"I'm going steal your shampoo now, Dawnie." Claudia said, darting past her friend and up the stairs.

"No you're not!" Dawn shouted as she ran after her.

Down in the kitchen, Artie, Pete, Leena and Myka listened to the sound of shrieking, laughter and thumping feet. They smiled. It seemed as though the children were getting along again.


	29. Chapter 29

_What are you still doing here? What are you still doing anywhere?_

It wasn't Dawn's thought. It just happened to have been born in her head. Because she'd given up thinking like that. It was just the Abomination. Even though Dawn hadn't had an episode for over a week now. Even though it was the first time the Abomination had ever spoken to her at all.

She'd been hoping that the Clozaril was working, but-

Dawn knew that nothing would work, as long as there was the tiniest part of her that believed that she was the Key.

-apparently it wasn't.

People believed foolish things all the time. Dawn knew that there had been a period when astronomers had come up with more and more complicated explanations as to why the planets orbited the Earth the way they did, until the Copernicus' heliocentric model became more widely accepted. If people could believe something as absurd as an Earth-centric Solar System, Dawn could believe that she was a ball of energy merely in the form of a human.

_Don't be ridiculous._

No, the Abomination was right, equating a ball of energy to a human _was_ ridiculous.

It hit her with all the suddenness of a heart attack.

The First Law of Thermodynamics. The total energy of an isolated system cannot change. If Dawn really was a ball of energy, then her human form should contain all of the Key's energy.

Dawn had no reason to assume that magical energy, or whatever the Key was made of, would be any different. If the monks could've destroyed her - destroyed the Key - to thwart the Abomination then they would've. Dawn had gathered that much from her dreams. It was part of the reason why the monks had worshipped her - the Key. It was indestructible.

So, if the magical energy of the Key had been transformed into the chemical energy of Dawn, then the fact remained that she was still a closed circuit. The energy hadn't gone anywhere. It couldn't.

Which meant that, if Dawn was the Key, she was indestructible.

Except that she wasn't. The numerous cuts and scrapes she'd received throughout her life proved that. Even the scars on Dawn's wrist proved that.

But then, that didn't necessarily prove anything. If she was magical energy stored in a human shell, then the shell could act independently of the energy it contained. It was a separate energy system, maintained by the spell the monks had used to bring Dawn Summers into existence.

So, if Dawn Summers was nothing but a container for the Key's energy, then the only way to release it would be to remove the shell.

Cutting herself wasn't sufficient, that much was clear. Which meant that, if Dawn wanted to test the theory, she would have to take far more radical steps.

The problem was, Dawn didn't want to take that step. She knew what the step was, had even been poised to take it a couple of times, but she didn't want to. She was happy, as much as she could be. Things were going well with Claudia, she'd finally cracked teleportation, and she had managed to get over the (as she realised now) completely unnecessary guilt she'd felt after Artie's stabbing. Life was good.

On the other hand, if Dawn wanted to prove she was the Key, or prove that she wasn't, she had to take the step.

You can't get to the stuff inside a container without ripping open the container. To get to the Key, Dawn had to be out of the way.

She had to be dead.

If Dawn did kill herself, there were, as she saw it, three things that could happen.

The first, and probably the most likely, was that she would die.

The second was that the Key would be freed from its shell, the Abomination would come and get it and then do whatever it wanted with it.

The third was that Dawn wouldn't die at all. In order to contain magical energy of the Key's power, Dawn would have to be incredibly durable. The fact that knives could cut her was irrelevant. If her death released the Key, it was nonsensical to imagine that the monks would make her fragile, if her death did release the Key. If the Key was never meant to be released, and Dawn's death was the way to release it, then they would have had to make her immortal, if not invincible.

Dawn didn't fancy going through life with severed wrists. So a violent death was out.

That is, of course, if she took the step at all.

_Why not? What have you got to lose? You know how well you coped with the choice between staying here and leaving. How are you going to manage, now that you know you can prove or disprove your sanity once and for all?_

The Abomination had a point. Or, rather, whichever part of Dawn's damaged mind that had produced the thought had a point. Dawn had contemplated suicide several times already. All it would take was a moment of weakness, and Dawn knew she had those happening in abundance.

She even had the means sitting in a bottle next to her bed. Greene had told her that an overdose of Clozaril could cause her heart to fail.

A heart attack wouldn't be so bad.

_Take it._

Claudia wouldn't approve.

_Take it._

Dawn had told Joshua that she wouldn't rush into dangerous experiments.

_Take it._

She didn't want to cause Buffy or Claudia any grief.

_Take it._

Don't take it Dawn you know its crazy don't do it Dawn

_Take it._

No Dawn its suicide you're crazy reconsider in the morning

_Take it._

_Take it._

_TAKE IT._

Dawn reached out and knocked the bottle to the floor and kicked it under her bed.

"No!"

~*~

"Um, Claud? You know how you said I should talk to you about things that were bothering me?" Dawn said nervously, pushing her thumb against her fingers.

"Oh, yeah, sure." Claudia said, instantly shutting down her laptop. "What is it, Dawnie?"

"What if I said that I had an idea that would prove once and for all whether I was insane or not?"

"You know I'd help you with that. After all, you helped me with Josh, and that sounded equally crazy." Claudia said sympathetically.

"Well, it turns out that you can't." Dawn said bluntly. "You can't help. See, I figured out that, thermodynamically, the Key's energy still exists within me and cannot be destroyed. So in order to reveal it, I have to get out of the way, as it were."

"Uh, Dawnie? That kind of sounds like suicide. And I'd really rather that you didn't die." Claudia said, beginning to chew her hair.

"No, see, I worked out that there's one chance in three that I won't die at all. And, depending on how I die, I could be resuscitated, which would make it two in three. If I just die straight out and get resuscitated, that means I'm not the Key. If I don't die, then it means I am. If I do die and turn into the Key, then I am. See, its fool proof." Dawn said, with a cheerfulness that she didn't really feel.

"Yeah, but it's still dangerous, Dawn. I'd really rather not-"

"Aw, c'mon, Claud! There's got to be dozens of artefacts that could resuscitate me, let alone a defibrillator." Dawn said plaintively.

"I don't know, Dawn..."

"66.6 recurring survival chance, Claud. And if I do die, then that'll mean that I really am the Key. In that case, I don't want to live anyway."

"Well, if you insist." Claudia said, clearly reluctantly.

Dawn went back to her room with Claudia following close behind her. She poured some water from the tap, rummaged around under her bed, and retrieved the bottle.

Then Dawn swallowed as many as she could manage.

When she looked up, Claudia was gone.

_Gotcha._


	30. Chapter 30

Reality is subjective. What may seem one way to someone may seem entirely different to someone else.

The problem with this is, if what you're seeing seems almost, but not quite, real, it's impossible to tell where reality ends and hallucinations begin.

For example, Dawn was pretty sure that she'd just swallowed more Clozaril than was healthy. Probably more than a lethal dose. However, she wasn't hundred percent positive about that.

Dawn had once told Claudia that she shouldn't doubt the reality around her, because once she did that, she'd never stop. Dawn had told her that she should only doubt herself, doubt her own perspective of reality.

Dawn had reached the point where her view of reality was suspect. Ordinarily, that wouldn't have mattered so much, given that she hallucinated the Abomination fairly regularly and that almost certainly wasn't real. However, after having (possibly) overdosed on antipsychotics, Dawn suddenly found it imperative to find someone to tell her what was really going on.

After all, when something is too outrageous to deal with by yourself, then you need to find someone else help you to deal with it.

Unfortunately, Dawn couldn't find anyone. The Claudia who she had told about her plan to prove whether she was the Key or not had vanished into mid-air, which suggested that she'd been a hallucination. So Dawn needed to find the real Claudia.

The only problem was that the entire B&B was empty. Apparently everyone had chosen today to be elsewhere.

On the other hand, Dawn could just be hallucinating the whole thing. After all, how could wandering around an empty building not be some kind of metaphor for craziness?

Still, if she had overdosed, she did need to find someone to help her.

So, if no one was at Leena's, Dawn needed to get to the Warehouse. The only problem with that was Dawn didn't have a car, and it was miles from Univille to the Warehouse. The Clozaril would probably start to take effect before then.

Of course, Dawn could call an ambulance, but given that she worked for a top secret government project and was sister to a Slayer, and one of the symptoms of a Clozapine overdose was delirium, Dawn didn't want to spill secrets to some doctor or other. Especially seeing as how she didn't cope with new people well in general, because there was always a chance that they might be the Abomination.

Dawn knew that paranoia was a symptom of schizophrenia, but there wasn't anything she could do about that. She just couldn't bring herself to involve strangers.

Unfortunately, Dawn couldn't contact anyone at the Warehouse because Artie hadn't thought to give her a Farnsworth, and Dawn didn't know how to contact anyone otherwise.

She didn't want to teleport either, because the sheer amount of wackiness contained in the Warehouse meant that there was every chance that something would go wrong. Dawn hadn't tested that yet. She didn't trust that it would get her there.

That meant that either Dawn had to steal a car (after having seen Claudia do it several times, she was pretty sure she knew the technique) or just walk. However, given all the possible side effects that a Clozapine overdose might give her, Dawn was sure that she didn't want to be driving a car if she suddenly had a heart attack or went into a coma.

Which only left walking. Dawn just had to hope that nothing went wrong with her on the way.

~*~

At first, Dawn thought that her feeling short of breath was because she was walking as quickly as she could, and her rather sedentary life style had made her unfit.

It was when Dawn was a little more than half way there that she started to feel dizzy. Although she didn't want to, Dawn felt compelled to slow down. If she didn't, she felt certain that she'd fall flat on her face.

It was only when her shortness of breath didn't abate with the slower pace that Dawn finally began to accept that she really had overdosed. Up until then, she'd hoped that everything was a hallucination - albeit a sustained one that was radically different from the ones that she normally had.

Still, if that was all that was going to happen, that wasn't so bad.

It wasn't until Dawn was about a hundred yards from the Warehouse that she felt like an elephant was sitting on her chest. And apparently it was a magic elephant, because it was making her heart start beating much, much faster than it had been just moments before.

Ha, magic elephant.

It took a great deal of effort for Dawn to wrench herself away from the hilarity of that particular idea and stagger the remaining distance to the Warehouse.

Unfortunately, when Dawn actually got there, she realised that she couldn't remember the sequence of - uh, what were they called, oh, she knew this one... numbers! The sequence of numbers that got her into the Umbilicus. Sure, there was an eye scanner thingy to get into the Warehouse proper, but she needed the code first.

Dawn had never forgotten a number in her entire life. She could remember Pi past a thousand digits, and she'd entered this particular code dozens of times. But she just couldn't remember it.

It sure didn't help that she could barely breathe, and it felt like her heart was going to pop out through her ribcage at any moment.

Dawn squinted at the key pad, shrugged, and started pressing buttons at random. Hopefully one sequence would be right.

It took Dawn entirely surprise when she suddenly found herself horizontal. She had just a moment to wonder how exactly she'd gotten there before she passed out.

~*~

Dawn was completely oblivious to the door to the Umbilicus opening. She dimly noticed being picked up and moved, but she drifted back into unconsciousness before she was put down again.

She resurfaced briefly to hear a female voice she didn't recognise say "...she's not very big. The overdose hit her fast and hard..." before she went under again.

Her sleep was filled with a persistent beeping and the murmur of voices.

Dawn was never sure exactly how long her eyes were open before she became fully aware that they were. She could see Mrs Frederic, Leena and Claudia deep in conversation with a woman Dawn didn't recognise. Dawn tried to ask what was going on, but for some reason she just couldn't seem to muster the breath to speak.

Dawn must've passed out again, because the next thing she knew Claudia was sitting next to her. She looked like she'd been crying. Dawn reached a hand out to touch her, make sure she was really there, but her arm didn't move quite like she wanted to.

The IV drip attached to her wrist probably had something to do with that.

"You're awake." Claudia said tonelessly. Dawn realised, to someone who wasn't her, it would look like she had overdosed herself as a suicide attempt. Which was actually only partly true, but then Claudia wouldn't know that.

She could imagine how it must feel to have someone close to you try and kill themselves. Because Dawn remembered when Greene had told her that Claudia had done just that, back at the psychiatric hospital.

Dawn tried to explain herself to Claudia, but she couldn't force the words out. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Wasn't suicide, Claud. It was a plan." she said in a painful whisper.

Claudia rubbed at her eyes. "No, Dawn. I don't care what you thought you were doing, you tried to kill yourself."

Dawn tried to speak, but Claudia wasn't done yet. "How could you? I thought you were doing okay. You told me you'd talk to me about your problems, and then you pull something like this? How could you, Dawn?"

"Did try to talk to you. Explained my reasoning. Only you were a hallucination. Not getting better, Claud. Hearing voices. New hallucinations. Thought I had talked to you." Dawn rasped.

"Oh." Claudia said heavily. "I - _oh_."

"'m sorry, Claud." Dawn mumbled.

Claudia didn't know what to say. When the alarm had gone off because someone was trying to gain access to the Warehouse, Claudia had felt like her heart had fallen into her stomach. She'd thought that Dawn was dying, that some artefact was killing her.

When Mrs Frederic had called some doctor, Vanessa Calder, who'd appeared freakishly fast (not quite Mrs Frederic vanish-by-the-time-you-turn-around fast, but faster than it should take someone from Univille to get to the Warehouse) and diagnosed Dawn has having overdosed, Claudia had somehow managed to feel even worse.

She had prepared a whole speech to give Dawn when she woke up (because there was never any doubt that she would) only to discard it because it was too harsh. Then she'd reconsidered it again. Eventually, Claudia had realised that she had no idea what she would say to Dawn.

Now, Claudia felt a little better, because Dawn hadn't tried to kill herself, at least not intentionally (although she would definitely be asking Dawn to explain exactly what had been going through her head) but she also felt worse, because Dawn was doing worse. Claudia knew how it felt to question the reality of what you were seeing. She knew that there weren't words to describe just how unpleasant it was.

So, in lieu of saying something more meaningful, Claudia said "Dr Calder - that's the Warehouse doctor, I didn't even know we had one of those - says that you got here before the symptoms became too severe. Unfortunately, she can't pump the drug out, only treat the symptoms, which is why you're hooked up to all these things. We're in some kind of infirmary, by the way, which I didn't know we had either."

"So how long until 'm better?" Dawn whispered.

Claudia shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't know. To be honest, all this medical stuff kind of creeps me out, so I didn't really listen to the details."

"Thanks for being here, Claud."

Claudia smiled for the first time one what seemed like days. "Anytime."

Mrs Frederic poked her head through the door. "Ms Donovan, might I have a word with you?"

Dawn's hand latched on to Claudia's arm and the heart monitor began beeping rapidly as her pulse spiked. "Don't go. Too outrageous alone."

"Sorry, Mrs F." Claudia said apologetically. "I'm not going anywhere."

Mrs Frederic looked at the pair gravely for a long moment before coming fully into the room. Leena followed behind her. "Very well. This does concern you both, after all."

"If this is something ominous, could it wait a few hours? I don't really think I'd be up to much right now." Claudia asked.

"No, it can't wait. We've just received word from Arthur. He and the other agents have captured MacPherson, and they're bringing him here for bronzing. They'll be here in an hour and a half."

"That's great!" Claudia exclaimed. "Any sign of Radburn?"

"No. We believe that he's still out there selling artefacts, like MacPherson. But we'll catch him, too. He doesn't have MacPherson's skills."

"So what's so urgent?" Claudia asked, frowning.

"Bronzing?" Dawn added hoarsely.

"Bronzing is what we do to men and women too dangerous to leave out in the world. Essentially, we flash-freeze them and encase them in bronze." Mrs Frederic explained. Claudia noticed that she didn't answer her question.

"In answer to your question, Ms Donovan" Mrs Frederic said, as though reading Claudia's thoughts "we have found an... irregularity. Several artefacts that should be in the Warehouse aren't. MacPherson has them."

Suddenly, Claudia realised what Mrs Frederic was going to say next. What else could explain the serious expression on Leena's face, and the urgency that led them to talk about this on Dawn's sick bed?

"It turns out that the artefacts were withdrawn by someone working at the Warehouse. By you, in fact, Ms Donovan."

Dawn shook her head. "No. Wasn't her."

"With all due respect, Ms Summers, you are hardly in a position to know whether she did it or not."

"No. Wasn't her. Mirror."

"Um, Dawn? The mirror didn't actually say anything about me stealing artefacts. Not that I'm doing that, mind you." Claudia added hurriedly.

"No, but I remember. Only snippets. Mainly you. Remember you feeling guilty, and sad, and definitely not stealing things." Dawn said.

"What are you two talking about?" Leena asked, baffled.

Claudia sighed. "Long story. I'll tell you after Dawn gets better, okay? But I swear, I didn't steal anything."

Mrs Frederic stared at her for a long moment before nodding. "Very well. We will talk about this later." Then she and Leena left.

"You never told me you remembered anything from when the mirror possessed you." Claudia said softly.

"I don't." Dawn tried to smile, but it was more like a grimace. "Lied through my teeth."

~*~

Dawn pretended to fall asleep a little while after that. She needed some time to think.

As far as she knew, MacPherson still had Poe's pen, which was the only chance she had of curing her schizophrenia. But, if he was going to be bronzed, she would never have a chance to ask him where it was. And she needed to ask him in such a way that he couldn't refuse to tell her.

Dawn needed a plan, and she needed it soon. So she lay there with her eyes closed and schemed.


	31. Chapter 31

Dawn continued to pretend to be asleep until Claudia got up and left, presumably to greet Artie and the others and to watch MacPherson get bronzed. It was possible that Dawn actually did fall asleep during that time - it seemed like barely any time passed between formulating her plan and Claudia leaving.

Still, given that she was being pumped full of drugs in order to counteract the effects of her overdose, Dawn was hardly surprised she fell asleep. She only hoped that she remained conscious and able to move long enough to carry out this plan.

After waiting for a while, to make sure that Claudia was far enough away not to notice her leaving, Dawn heaved herself upright, and laboriously unhooked herself from the IV drip. Given that even that minor exertion left her feeling dizzy, Dawn realised that she would need something to lean on, if she was going to walk.

Fortunately, the drip was on wheels. She could use that.

So Dawn shambled off, holding tightly to the drip and even pausing for breath every now and then.

It normally would've taken Dawn barely any time to walk from the infirmary to the shelf that contained the spare Teslas and Farnsworths, but, just then, Dawn probably could've been outpaced by a tortoise. Dawn took a Tesla and tried to tuck it into her belt, but she realised that someone had put her into a hospital gown. She had to settle for holding it under one arm (as she needed both hands on the drip to keep her steady). After a moment's thought, Dawn took a Farnsworth too.

Then Dawn began her slow walk to another aisle, in order to retrieve a specific artefact. She could only hope that she managed to get there and then get back to the Bronze Sector before MacPherson arrived. There was every chance that she would be too slow.

Still, she managed to get to the artefact, only stopping a couple of times to catch her breath, and once when her knees buckled and she collapsed.

It was at that point that Dawn realised that she didn't actually know the way to the Bronze Sector. She'd never been there before - in fact, she hadn't even heard of it before that day.

Fortunately, Claudia had installed little computer out posts all over the Warehouse. One of them could tell her how to get there.

Dawn made her way to one, find out where she needed to go, and slowly began to hobble there.

~*~

Artie was surprised to see a hospital gown-wearing Dawn come staggering towards him. Mrs Frederic hadn't told him what had happened to her.

However, Artie wasn't surprised for very long.

Because Dawn shot him with her Tesla.

Then she slowly manoeuvred her way around his prone body, and shot MacPherson where he stood getting ready to be bronzed.

When Artie came around a few minutes later, he was the only non-bronzed person there.

~*~

MacPherson didn't like being Tesla'd. While it was true that it wiped out his sort term memory so he could never actually remember being hit, the lingering ache from being shot was really unpleasant.

However, MacPherson couldn't remember having done anything to warrant being Tesla'd.

So, when he opened his eyes and found himself still in the Bronze Sector, but with everything covered in some misty, golden haze of energy, MacPherson wondered if this was what being bronzed felt like.

However, when MacPherson stood up and noticed a scantily clad girl leaning heavily on an IV drip and pointing a Tesla at him, MacPherson realised that something else entirely was going on.

"You must be Dawn." MacPherson said warily, eyeing the Tesla.

"Where's Poe's pen?" Dawn said in a harsh, grating voice.

MacPherson raised an eyebrow. "I didn't tell Arthur where my other artefacts are. Why should I tell you?"

"Do you know... what Rheticus' compass does?" Dawn wheezed. "If you don't tell me, I'll leave you here and throw... the compass into the sea. You'll stay here, in this limbo, for ever."

"Ah. But let me tell you a little secret, Dawn." MacPherson lent forward conspiratorially. "I'm not really here. Artie bronzed me. You're hallucinating this entire thing."

Dawn kept her face carefully immobile. "Really? So it won't matter if I turn this little dial... here and go back to reality?" she said, as she reached under her arm to produce the compass.

The upside of this was that Dawn was no longer pointing a Tesla at him. MacPherson calculated his chances of rushing her and recovering the compass before she could turn the dial and leave him stuck in limbo.

They weren't good.

MacPherson didn't want to give up Poe's pen. It was an incredibly useful artefact, in the right hands.

The only problem was, the pen was one those artefacts that only worked for a certain type of person. Neither MacPherson nor Radburn was that type of person. Dawn might well be - she was certainly unstable enough.

MacPherson tried to work out that chaos that could be caused by a schizophrenic girl with a pen that could alter reality. He couldn't. The potential havoc Dawn could cause, providing she could use the pen, was limitless.

MacPherson could certainly use chaos on that scale as a distraction from his own plan. Provided, of course, that Dawn didn't leave him stuck in limbo and threw away the compass.

All in all, it seemed like a win-win situation.

So MacPherson told her that it was locked in a safe in a room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles. He told her the combination. He also warned her that there was every possibility that the artefact wouldn't work for her at all.

Dawn couldn't help but think that it was a sign that the artefact that could restore her sanity was in her hometown. She'd probably burnt all her bridges with Claudia and the others at the Warehouse by overdosing and shooting Artie. But in LA, she could go back to school, see her family, and get on with her life.

So, after MacPherson finished speaking, Dawn turned the dial on the compass.

Leaving MacPherson stuck in limbo.

~*~

Dawn left her Tesla next to Artie's unconscious body. She wouldn't be needing it anymore. But she kept the compass and the Farnsworth. Then she headed out of the Warehouse as fast as she could.

When she got out, she hijacked Artie's car. Apparently having watched Claudia do it several times had been enough for her to work out the technique.

She drove back to Leena's as fast as she could, not really caring if she broke the speed limit. Univille was a tiny town, there weren't any traffic cops to pull her over. Artie could deal with any speeding tickets.

Pausing only to write a note explaining what she had done, and saying she was sorry for... well, a bunch of things, Dawn went into her room and activated the teleporter she had built there.

Moments later, she was in a hotel room in Los Angeles.

Whether it was the proximity of the pen reacting with her ragged aura, or the adrenaline surging through her at the prospect of finally being cured, or the cocktail of drugs Dr Calder had given her that made her feel better, Dawn didn't know.

But she was able to walk to the safe in the wall unaided and put in the code that MacPherson had given her. Unlike the code that let her into the Warehouse, Dawn remembered this one.

With some trepidation (what if MacPherson had lied to her? What if the safe was empty?) Dawn opened the safe.

Inside, there was a large pile of money, a couple of objects that were almost certainly artefacts, although Dawn didn't know what they did.

And a notebook with a quill pen lying on top of it.

Dawn let out a breath that she didn't even know she had been holding. Gingerly, with hands shaking with excitement and nervousness and fear and hope, Dawn removed the quill.

She looked around for some paper to write on, couldn't see any, and decided to write on the wall. After all, this wasn't her hotel room. It didn't matter what she did to it.

Dawn began to write _SANE_ in large, blocky capitals before she changed her mind. After all, what good would it do to be perfectly sane but dying from a drug overdose? Dawn had no doubt that, even though she was feeling better at the moment, the symptoms would come back.

So Dawn wrote _HEALTHY_ instead.

Dawn had heard the analogy drawn between life and a sparrow flying from a stormy winter night, through a well-lit, warm room and back out again.

But, apparently, being cured of schizophrenia didn't feel like that. Dawn didn't feel like she'd been flying through a stormy winter night only to enter a well-lit, warm room. She felt more like a deep sea fish that had spent its life surrounded by darkness and cold and the unbearable _pressure_ of the sea above it, only to find itself suddenly above the sea and thriving there. The cold was gone, and the darkness, and the pressure. There was just light and air and the sun.

In short, Dawn felt _fantastic_.

~*~

Buffy was walking out of the school gates, talking to her friends. "It's a shame about Marcie, if only we'd - Dawn?" Buffy finished in a strangled voice.

Xander looked up. "Huh? Did I zone out again?"

But Buffy wasn't listening. She had gone running up to a woman that neither Xander nor Willow had ever seen before.

Buffy stopped abruptly in front of her older sister. "Dawn? Are you okay?"

Dawn grinned widely. She wasn't sure that she'd ever be able to stop. She couldn't remember when she had last smiled like this. "Yeah, Buff. I'm okay."

Buffy enveloped Dawn in a massive hug, squeezing so hard that Dawn could hear her ribs creak. "I'm okay." Dawn repeated, resting her chin on the top of her sister's head.


	32. Chapter 32

"So." Xander said, sliding into the seat in front of Buffy. "What's the sitch with your sister?"

"What do you mean?" Buffy said with her mouth full of cafeteria food.

"Well, Buff, I've known you for months now. We've hunted vampires together. We nearly got killed by Will's robot boyfriend together. We flunked history together. And through all of that, you never mentioned that you had a sister." Xander replied.

"It's, uh, kind of personal." Buffy mumbled.

"More personal than being destined to fight vampires?" Xander countered. "Listen, Buff, you don't have to tell us if you don't want, but Will and I talked about it after you ditched us yesterday. We thought it was kind of suspicious that you suddenly have a sister."

"I didn't ditch you!" Buffy exclaimed indignantly. "I just... went off with Dawn. I haven't seen her in a while."

"Yeah, Buffy, that's kind of ditching us. You barely sited to tell us who Dawn was before you left." Xander said.

"And I don't suddenly have a sister." Buffy added. "In fact, if anyone was the one who suddenly had a sister, it was Dawn."

"Huh?" Xander said, nonplussed.

"She's older than I am, Xan. I was her sister as soon as I was born, but she had a few years as an only child first."

"Oh. So she really is your sister then?"

"Of course she is." Buffy snorted. "Don't you think I'd know if I suddenly had a sister that I've never had before?"

Xander shrugged. "So why didn't you mention her before then?"

Willow sat down next to him. "We talking about the "Sudden Sister Appearance"?" she said, making air quotes.

"Apparently she's always had a sister, Will." Xander replied.

"So why didn't you mention her before then?" Willow said, leaning forward eagerly.

"Exactly what I said." Xander added, crossing his arms.

"Listen, guys, it's complicated." Buffy said slowly. "It's not exactly something I should tell. If Dawn wants you to know, then she'll tell you."

"Is she a recovering drug addict?"

"Or a serial killer?"

"Or a getaway driver for a crime boss?"

"Or a vampire?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Will. We saw her in sunlight."

"Oh yeah, I forgot about that."

"She's probably an alien."

"Oh, that would be cool. Do have an alien sister, Buff?"

"What is wrong with you two?" Buffy said, acting stern but trying not to giggle. "She isn't anything of those things, don't worry."

"Would you tell us if she was, though?" Xander said, thoughtfully.

"Xan, if Dawn was a murderous alien drug addict gangster, you'd be the first to know." Buffy assured.

~*~

When Artie came around from being Tesla'd to find out that MacPherson had vanished, the first thing he did was head straight to his office to look at the security footage to find out what happened. On his way, he contacted everyone about MacPherson's escape.

The first thing that Claudia did upon hearing the news was go to the infirmary to check on Dawn.

But Claudia knew, before she even went in the room, that Dawn wouldn't be there. What better hostage could MacPherson take than a drug addled schizophrenic girl?

It wasn't until Claudia watched the footage of Dawn shooting Artie and using the compass on MacPherson that she accepted that MacPherson hadn't abducted Dawn. She'd left all by herself. Even then, Claudia had to watch the footage several times before it fully sank in.

The only question was, why? Claudia knew that there might well be no reason - after all, as much as it pained her to admit, Dawn was hardly in her right mind. But, assuming that Dawn had a sane reason for doing what she did, it didn't make sense. Trapping MacPherson in the same realm where Joshua was trapped was equally secure to the top secret sector in the middle of the Warehouse. There had to be something that Claudia was missing.

It wasn't until Claudia saw the note at Leena's that she realised what.

_Dear Claudia,_

I'm sorry for everything I've put you through during the last few months. But I can fix it. MacPherson told me where Poe's quill is. I can use it. I can be sane again.

Artie, you've probably seen the camera thingies (sorry, can't remember the right word right now) showing what ich habe. I mean what I did. Sorry for doing it, but I had to. Hope you understand.

Will send you the quill after I use it. Have taken Farnsworth. Will call.

Goodbye

The rather garbled nature of the note, combined with Dawn's naturally untidy handwriting and the fact that it was only made worse by Dawn's health problems made the note almost unintelligible.

But Claudia understood.

Dawn had a shot at sanity, and she was taking it, no matter what. Claudia couldn't fault her for that. After all, she would've done the same. Had in fact done the same, when she kidnapped Artie.

But Dawn wasn't coming back. That was evident. Why would she? She had only been around to try and find a solution to her schizophrenia, she'd made that evident right at the very beginning.

Claudia knew that Dawn had intended to stay at the psychiatric hospital and leave Claudia to rescue her brother by herself. And again, Claudia had suspected that Dawn would go right back to LA once Artie gave her the chance.

As far as Claudia could tell, the only reason that Dawn hadn't was because of Claudia. Because Dawn couldn't manage to cope with the world without someone by her side, and from what Claudia had seen, Buffy was woefully unequipped for the task.

But, if Poe's quill worked - and Claudia couldn't see why it wouldn't, she had heard the kind of things it was capable of - then Dawn could go out in the world and face it by herself, like she had before her schizophrenia had taken hold.

She wouldn't need Claudia for support any more. Dawn could get on with her life. And Claudia was happy for her. She really was.

She was crying for an entirely different reason. In a minute, she'd even remember what that reason was.

~*~

Dawn had, unfortunately, missed the deadline for readmission for the spring semester at UCLA. Even if she hadn't, Joyce wouldn't hear of her going off again so soon, in case she relapsed.

Dawn told her again and again that she wouldn't, but, because she couldn't tell her mother that she had been cured by a magic pen owned by a crazed nineteenth century poet, Joyce couldn't be so sure.

Dawn couldn't tell Buffy either. Her sister might be the Slayer, but that didn't mean that she needed to know about artefacts and the world of which Dawn had all too briefly been a part. Buffy had told Dawn about Sunnydale being on a Hellmouth, and all the things she'd gotten up to since she'd moved. Dawn had no doubts that Buffy didn't need more things to worry about.

Still, Dawn would've liked to have talked to someone. To cry from the rooftops that she was sane, that she wasn't the Key. That her plan had worked.

But the only person that Dawn could confide in was in South Dakota. Unfortunately, Dawn couldn't contact Claudia. Not even by Farnsworth. Oh, she had the physical capability to do it, she had even picked up to do it a half-dozen times. But, after her suicide attempt (because, really, that was what it had been, delirious logic aside) and shooting Artie, she had burned all her bridges.

They would've read her note by now, anyway. They would know why she had done what she had done. Dawn had no doubts that Artie or Claudia could find out whether she was okay or not with the touch of a button. If they wanted to contact her, they could. But she didn't think they would. Not after everything she had done.

No, it would be best for Claudia if Dawn never spoke to her again. The Warehouse was better off without her anyway.

Nevertheless, Dawn missed Claudia.

~*~

Artie was perfectly happy to leave MacPherson stuck in limbo. Although he'd never tell anyone, Artie didn't want a permanent reminder of his once-friend in the Warehouse. He preferred MacPherson remain invisible.

Of course, that wasn't the only decision Artie had to make.

There was the matter of the records stating that Claudia had removed certain artefacts from the Warehouse and given them to MacPherson, after all. Even though Artie didn't believe that she had done it, he had to find out exactly what had happened.

However, this matter was put on the backburner when Leena began complaining about a headache. In fact, she brought it up several times, each time forgetting that she had already mentioned it. When Artie realised that she was having memory problems, he asked Dr Calder to take a look at Leena.

At first, Calder couldn't find anything wrong with her. But, after a few hours when Leena began to feel dizzy and have trouble seeing straight, Calder began to suspect that there might be something wrong with Leena's brain.

Unfortunately, there was. It turned out that Leena's cerebrum was inflamed. She had Cerebritis.

At the moment, the inflammation wasn't at a dangerous level. Steroids would help, if they proved necessary - Calder wasn't sure they were, yet. They would have to wait and see if it developed or went away, especially seeing as how they didn't know what was causing it to appear so suddenly.

If it did get worse, though, and steroids weren't enough, then there would have to be surgery to relieve the pressure. That is, if they didn't find out what was wrong with her before then.

Artie was pretty sure he already knew.

MacPherson.

All that Artie had to do was get MacPherson to reveal what he'd done, and how to fix it.


	33. Chapter 33

Dawn did not believe in fate. She did not believe that there were certain actions that a human had no choice but to take. She did, however, believe that the universe would gradually reach complete entropy and would die from heat death, because the universe would have no free energy.

But that was just the theory she supported. Dawn knew that there were others. She had no wish, for example, to completely dismiss the Big Crunch Theory, because that had just as much merit. It also had nothing whatsoever to do with believing in fate.

However, Buffy apparently did believe in fate. Or perhaps fate believed in her. Because Giles had recently uncovered a prophecy.

The prophecy said that she would die. It said that the Master, the oldest and most evil vampire in Sunnydale, would kill her and break free from his prison.

Understandably, Buffy was upset by this. Upset enough to walk out of school as soon as she overheard Giles tell Angel about it, and go and find her sister.

Dawn, however, wasn't worried. Well, she was, but she was fairly certain that there were ways around the prophecy. Assuming, of course, that fate did exist and things could be foretold.

For example, Buffy could die a temporary death. Dying could last for only a few moments, and the prophecy could still be fulfilled. Dawn guessed that she came up with that idea as a result of her plan to temporarily kill herself with antipsychotics.

Not that Dawn mentioned that to Buffy, of course. Neither her suicide attempt nor her plan to thwart the prophecy. She didn't want to give Buffy false hope.

The problem was, Dawn didn't have any antipsychotics to hand. Even if she had, there was no way that she would put Buffy through that. It was a slow, painful death.

Of course, there was probably an artefact that could temporarily kill someone. There was probably a whole shelf of them, in fact.

Dawn picked up her Farnsworth.

On the other hand, she would have to actually convince someone to let her take the artefact, which was hardly something that they'd be likely to do, especially given that she hadn't actually returned Poe's pen.

Oh. Right.

Dawn put down the Farnsworth again, and pulled out the quill from the hiding place she had secreted it in.

Dawn had meant to return it, but then she had thought that there was a possibility that the pen would only work if it was close to her, and South Dakota was hardly close. Especially if it got neutralized and its effects got neutralized with it.

Dawn quickly scrawled TEMPORARY DEATH on a scrap of paper and went back to Buffy's room to show it to her.

"What's this?" Buffy said thickly, glancing briefly at the paper. "Temporary death? What's that supposed to mean?"

Dawn blinked. It hadn't worked.

How could it not have worked? It had worked for her!

Yes, it had. Dawn remembered MacPherson warning her that it might not work at all, because the quill needed a specific type of person to use it. Someone with a similar nature to Poe himself.

Dawn, with her schizophrenia, had been similar to that rather crazed poet. But sane Dawn wasn't. She was normal, and the pen wouldn't work for normal people.

"Just an idea I had." Dawn mumbled, scurrying out again.

Dawn picked up the Farnsworth.

Okay. So the pen wasn't working for her any longer. She could live with that - she didn't want to have the kind of power the pen gave, not really. Well, at least not usually. She would have liked it right now.

So she needed a new artefact. Unfortunately, to do that, she would have to talk to someone who worked there. She wouldn't be able to face Artie, not after she'd shot him. She toyed briefly with the idea of contacting Myka, but she was too protocol-bound to just hand an artefact over without asking questions. Leena wouldn't do it until she had made absolutely sure that Dawn's aura was in order, which might leave it too late. She didn't think Leena's gift worked through the Farnsworth. And Pete - well, as childish as Pete was, he wouldn't just hand out an artefact because a friend (someone who had been a friend) asked. Not without asking questions. And given that Buffy was the Slayer, she wouldn't be able to answer those questions.

Dawn skittered uncomfortably around the idea of calling Claudia.

Dawn put down the Farnsworth.

Then again, if she didn't at least try, then Dawn would effectively be leaving Buffy to die, and she couldn't do that.

Dawn picked up the Farnsworth.

She took a deep breath, and called Claudia.

~*~

Claudia had, very briefly, been proud when Artie had given her a Farnsworth. The reason that she was so briefly proud was because he'd only given it to her because of the brief panic when Dawn had left MacPherson in limbo, and then forgotten to take it back when the whole situation with Leena began.

So, when her Farnsworth began buzzing, Claudia thought that it was Artie, calling to say that he hadn't been able to get MacPherson to tell him what he'd done to Leena. At least not until Artie removed him from limbo, which wasn't something that Artie was inclined to do.

So, when Claudia opened her Farnsworth to see Dawn, she froze in surprise.

"Don't hang up, Claud!" Dawn said, basically as soon as the connection was made. "I need you to do something."

"_You_ need _me_ to do something?" Claudia said shrilly. "Why should I do anything for you? You shot Artie!" Claudia didn't add what was, to her, the more heinous offence._You left me._

"Yes, I did." Dawn said, speaking almost before the words left Claudia's mouth. "I have no reason to expect you to help me. But I need your help, Claud. No for me. For my sister. Listen, I wouldn't ask if it weren't important, you know that. But I need your help."

Well. Dawn wouldn't have asked if it wasn't important. That was clear enough. Dawn had no plans to contact her, and wouldn't have. Whatever crisis Dawn had embroiled herself in was the only Claudia was speaking to her.

Still, this was Dawn. She was speaking to her. And as angry as she felt (and about a thousand other emotions, as well, so much that Claudia didn't know how she could have them all at once) Claudia was glad that Dawn was speaking to her. If she was speaking to her now, there was every chance that she could speak to Dawn again, later.

"Okay." Claudia said, softly. "What do you want?"

Dawn made a face. "Uh, this is going to sound really weird."

Claudia felt a pit open up in her stomach. "Oh God. The pen didn't work, did it? And you're going to ask me to, I don't know, through salt over my shoulder to keep the Abomination away or something."

"No, no, no. The pen worked just fine." Dawn reassured her. (_Although I'm surprised you don't already know that..._) "But, um... I need another artefact."

Claudia narrowed her eyes. "What do you want, Dawn?"

"Uh, I need an artefact that'll kill someone. Kill someone temporarily, for only a few hours." Dawn said nervously, waiting for Claudia to ask why, only to be hang up because Dawn couldn't answer that question.

"Why?" Claudia asked explosively.

"I can't tell you, Claud. I'm sorry, but it's not my secret to tell."

Claudia mulled over the problem for a few seconds.

The problem was, how could you trust someone when they'd proved they couldn't be trusted? When, in fact, they'd shot someone?

But then, this was Dawn. Although she had shot Artie, she hadn't exactly been in her right mind at the time. And she had done it for a reason, even if it hadn't been evident what that reason was until after she was done.

That was the thing, though. Claudia didn't know what Dawn needed something that would temporarily kill someone for. What it came down to was - did she trust Dawn to have a good reason?

As it turned out, she did.

"Okay, Dawn, I'll get you your artefact." Claudia said. Then she frowned as something occurred to her. "But how am I going to get it to you? I'm assuming you're in LA by now."

"Sunnydale, actually." Dawn corrected.

Claudia shrugged. LA, Sunnydale, it made no difference to her. They were both several states away. "Either way, how am I meant to get to you?"

"There's a teleporter in my room."

Claudia's eye widened. "Seriously? You cracked teleportation?"

"Yes. Didn't I mention that in my note?"

"Your note was startlingly incoherent."

"Oh." Dawn replied self-consciously. "Well, anyway, there's a teleporter in my room. It's only one way, though. I haven't figured out how to teleport back again without building a whole new device."

Okay. So, if she did teleport over to Sunnydale with an artefact, she would be stuck there for a while.

Oh well. Things could be worse.

"Alright, I'll get the artefact, then you can tell me how your device works."

"Deal." Dawn said, grinning widely.

~*~

Sometime later, Claudia appeared in Dawn's bedroom in a flash of light. She was wearing neutralizer gloves, and was holding a flower in one hand and a neutralizer bag in the other. Her hair was also liberally sprinkled with purple goo.

"Don't ask." Claudia said grumpily, cutting off Dawn's question.

"Is that it?" Dawn said, reaching for the flower.

"Don't touch it!" Claudia snapped. Dawn recoiled. "This is Napoleon's Violet. When he was banished to Elba, Napoleon said that he would return to France when the violets bloomed. Touching the flower will kill someone for the duration of time he spent on Elba, unless it's neutralized."

"Uh, Claud? I don't need to know the history to use the artefact."

"Yeah, I know. But I'm telling you anyway because I'm trying to stall, because I'm really uncomfortable with you using this." Claudia said frankly.

"Telling me you're stalling kind of ruins the whole point of stalling." Dawn said drily.

Claudia shrugged, then winced. "Ow, this goo really stings. I'm going to need a shower after I use this."

"After you use it?" Dawn queried.

"No offence, Dawn, but I'm not entirely sure that you're sane. I'm not going to give you a dangerous artefact. Especially given that I'm the only one with purple gloves."

"Okay. Just down the hall. Follow me."

Claudia cocked her head. "Uh, when you said you needed this for your sister..."

"Don't ask, Claud. I do know what I'm doing."

Claudia looked at Dawn for a long moment. "Okay, fine. I trust you."

Dawn led Claudia to Buffy's room. Buffy leapt up when she saw Claudia. "What's going on?"

Claudia looked at Dawn, who nodded. Claudia tossed the violet at Buffy.

It was a bad throw. There was no way that it would've touched Buffy.

Except that Buffy automatically tried to catch it, and collapsed bonelessly when she did.

Claudia's pocket began buzzing. She took out her Farnsworth and opened it.

Immediately, Artie began talking, seeming not to even notice the goo dripping down Claudia's face.

"Claudia, I let Macpherson out of limbo, it seemed like the only way to get him to tell us what he had done to Leena. But as soon as I let him out, Leena attacked Pete and Tesla'd him and Myka. Then she helped MacPherson escape, and they debronzed HG Wells and took him with them."

As if in response to the bad news, an earthquake began.

~*~

Author's note: I have decided to end this story here, because of the thematic change in the next story and because I really like cliff-hangers. I'm evil that way. But don't worry, the next story "Questions of Family" will be out soon.

You can call this the end of Season 1, if you want.


End file.
